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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26019670">haunt strange, far places</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaparral_crown/pseuds/chaparral_crown'>chaparral_crown</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Hannibal (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Cannibalism, Canonical Character Death, Character Death In Dream, Dream Sex, Dubious Consent, Dubious Ethics, Everything is Beautiful and Everything Hurts, Government Experimentation, Hannibal Lecter is the Chesapeake Ripper, M/M, Obsessive Hannibal Lecter, Older Man/Younger Man, Or Is It?, Will Graham Has Nightmares, Young Will Graham</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 06:02:25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>25,648</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26019670</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaparral_crown/pseuds/chaparral_crown</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Doctor Lecter holds the scalpel in Will's hands between two fingers, eyes shiny with something like awe for the first time in their short acquaintance. It is the same look his father gives him the first time he sees Will’s trick in person. It is the same one Doctor Bloom gives him when he offers her the wilting peony tucked tight to his chest, back when it didn’t upset her to see. </p><p>“Very good, Will,” he whispers, and Will - barely awake, hand clutching the instrument as one meaning to write with it instead of sever - nods, and leans into the hand at his neck. </p><p>---</p><p>Will Graham’s imagination can pull things into reality from dreams. </p><p>At the behest of the US government, Doctor Hannibal Lecter has been hired to maintain his mental and physical health within the institution that keeps him.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>151</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>318</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. bother my white teeth</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Sometimes, the brain worm takes over your writing schedule and usurps it with some decidedly darker. </p><p>Warnings: everything, really.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p> </p><p>“Will,” says Doctor Bloom in the muted grey of the room. “Are you awake?” </p><p> </p><p>Clutching an old, celluloid hairbrush in his hands, buried in his mound of blankets, Will nods. </p><p> </p><p>He's slept relatively well over the last night - there wasn’t a lot to be afraid of this time. It was just his Nana’s room, timeless, quiet, empty. The house was uninhabited by Daddy these days, the halls and beds full of dust. He offers the hairbrush to Doctor Bloom with one arm exposed and she takes it with a soft thank you, but doesn’t push for more. He wishes he had grabbed the matching powder box,and rolls away to bring the vanity back again.</p><p> </p><p>Teenagers are so hard to get out of bed.  </p><p> </p><p>But it’s more than that. It hurts to talk to Doctor Bloom right now, because she doesn’t want to be here, and Will is increasingly not wanting to be here either. </p><p> </p><p>---</p><p> </p><p>The first time Will brings something back from his sleep, it is harmless. Clutched in his hand is a large sprig of dill, flowering white in his hands.</p><p> </p><p>He is four years old, and asks the neighbor lady what she puts in the potato salad that makes it different from his grandmother’s, at his Nana’s gentle request. It’s darling to make her quiet grandson talk, and who is safer than the neighbor? (<em> “Bless his soul, such a sweet boy, that Will Graham, so unlike his father at that age!” </em>) </p><p> </p><p>Her name is Anita, she is white haired and gently browned by the sun, and her garden is beautiful - Will likes to hide in the Iceberg and Queen Anne roses that cover the fence posts at the edge of her property, just a block away from his. When he asks after her recipe, he is guided by Ms. Anita to the corner of her porch, where she keeps herbs and small vines in cracking terracotta pots. She brushes her hands over the top of the rosemary and smells them, and Will, thinking it’s something important, does the same. </p><p> </p><p>“For good dreams,” she explains, and Will nods. </p><p> </p><p>And he does - he has a good dream that night. The well-tended yard is golden in late summer afternoon sun, foxgloves and lupines standing guard at the edges of the tomato vines and mint. Will is alone between the wrought iron white furniture, pots of begonias and geranium, and concrete statues of fawns that look alive in the shimmering oily light. He brushes past the herbs with the plodding steps that all wandering children drum out, and reaches for the small white flowers growing from the top of the dill plant. It’s what his grandmother will need for the potato salad of course, and Ms. Anita has so much of it. Everything smells wonderful. </p><p> </p><p>He doesn’t remember what startles him - maybe a mockingbird in the oak trees, or the sun shuttering it’s light for a moment like a shade draws over it abruptly, but he clutches tight at the flowered stem of the dill and pulls.</p><p> </p><p>Will runs to the edge of the yard, sliding through the space between the long branches of thorned yellow and white blooms. He doesn’t bother trying to take some of her roses, even when he sleeps, even if he is four years old, because the thorns hurt him, and he have no shears, and he doesn’t want to hurt. Little kitten scratches decorate his legs where his pajama parts don’t cover him fully anyway. </p><p> </p><p>---</p><p> </p><p>“Sugar, how’d y’get this?” his Nana asks. Will’s hands are green from the plant stems, and he shrugs, looking down at the marks like they’re bruises. His hands are fragrant with rosemary. He hides the prickling of rose thorn scratches, because he doesn’t want to admit that he thinks he’s not supposed to have the dill. </p><p> </p><p>Nana asks his daddy when he gets back from the boat yards about sleepwalking, but Will’s feet are remarkably clean, and no one knows how he could have reached the big, brass bolt lock on the front door. </p><p> </p><p>Maybe it’s just something he hid. He <em> is </em> such a quiet boy. </p><p> </p><p>---</p><p> </p><p>“You’re going to be meeting someone new today,” Doctor Bloom says after standing in the doorway a moment too long, pulling a chair from outside into the space. When Will looks out from the hole he’s made to breathe from under the covers, she is smiling, dressed in green and polished boots, a white coat thrown over top. She doesn’t normally - wear the lab coat. Said it was too impersonal, too sterile when she’s supposed to be his friend.  </p><p> </p><p>Will seals the hole, where he doesn’t have to see it. “I don’t really want to talk to Agent Crawford again.” </p><p> </p><p>(<em> Too many nightmares. Too many bad things coming back. </em>) </p><p> </p><p>Alana sighs. “I don’t think we’ll have Agent Crawford back for a while. Not until you’re ready, Will,” she explains. “But we talked about needing someone new for you, remember?”</p><p> </p><p>“Someone that’s not you,” he says, watching the blankness of the sheet. Breathe in, breathe out. The air is hot on his cheeks. “Someone that I haven’t imprinted on, I believe is what you said.” </p><p> </p><p>---</p><p> </p><p>The second time Will brings something back, it is also harmless, though certainly less easily explained. Beneath his pillow, carded between curled fingers, is a bird feather. It is grey and soft white, gently speckled like a stone. The brack and water from the Mississippi marshland is still damp in the bony quill at its apex. </p><p> </p><p>He is six now, and in the week before this, the kindergarten class is taken to the Sandhill cranes in the estuary to the east of the city. Will is not a large child, and from the dirt paths he is not able to see much over the yellowed grass, or into the longleaf pines and saw palmetto that cut the grey sky of the day. </p><p> </p><p>This is ok though, because he likes this better than the small school room where the colors of construction paper and the class storage cubbies are oppressively bright, and he feels pressed in by the other children around him. They are noisy, and he just wants back into the murmuring quiet of the den in his Nana’s house. It’s around noon. Her soaps should be on. She’ll pull him into her recliner with her, and he’ll marvel at the strangeness of her compression socks beneath the blue house dress, and both would sleep untroubled if he could just be at home. </p><p> </p><p>The teacher, Miss Cameron with her soft brown ringlets of hair like Will’s, pulls him up onto a bench when the class spots a bird in the distance. “Look for the red-head,” she says next to him, pointing with a bare left hand in front of him. “That’s how you know he’s the important bird here,” she explains. </p><p> </p><p>“Like a crown,” he says into the collar of his coat. </p><p> </p><p>“Yep, just like,” she says, but Will only sees the s-shape of it’s neck, and in the grey of the day, there’s nothing royal about him - he can’t see it’s crest. There’s lots of pictures in the gift shop on the way out, so surely he understands that’s what was beyond Miss Cameron’s hand, and he leaves disappointed, frowning into his dinner. </p><p> </p><p>When he dreams the week following, he is crouched beneath the spiny fans of the saw palmetto again, looking through the slats between and the criss-cross of blue sky above. He crawls along the marsh, winding his way around the low spiked trunks and grass, and comes to a clearing where a crane has diligently built up her nest. </p><p> </p><p>Reeds, mud, and a scattering of molted feathers make the round that protects a chick inside. It sleeps nestled into the crook of two dead pine branches. Will’s never seen a baby bird, and certainly not one so large, but his heart is full and excited when he sees it. </p><p> </p><p>The wind blows, and because it is November, Will shudders in the flannel of his night clothes, and worries. (<em> You do not consider the strangeness of the night clothes - all that matters is that you are here. </em>) How does something so small stay warm when the larger birds are afield? </p><p> </p><p>He beds down with the crane chick, all downy and whiskey-brown with youth like a chestnut, and is warmed by its tiny heart in the cool of the autumn day. He hopes that he is helping. His fingers curl in the surrounding debris, and from it he pulls the prettiest feather of them all. It doesn’t matter that it isn’t the red of it’s crest - it is long and grey and tissue thin and feels like he should hold onto it. </p><p> </p><p>The mother left it behind - it’s ok if he takes this, as far from her baby as it is. </p><p> </p><p>He doesn’t show anyone his feather when he wakes up, comfortable and warm in the quilt and sheets of his bed. He puts it on the windowsill of the bedroom where he can look at it, and hopes the crane chick slept as well as him. If there are down feathers in the wash when his clothes go to the laundry, it is written off as the rowdiness of boys that play outside, no matter that he was careful, no matter that Will Graham is as rowdy as fog on a lake. </p><p> </p><p>---</p><p> </p><p>“You’ll like him,” says Doctor Bloom, as earnest as ever. “He’s unlike the other doctors. He’s not attached to the project the way they are. He’s here just for you, to make sure you’re healthy and happy.” </p><p> </p><p>“A guy, because what, I can’t be around women anymore? Afraid I’ll start handing off flowers to them too?” Will rolls to look up at where the ceiling hides behind the fabric. It will be nondescript. There will be no light fixture, color, or texture. “Maybe I can rustle up some unseasonal plants for him for consistency.” </p><p> </p><p>Doctor Bloom hums, the amused one she does when she’s smiling and she knows he can’t see it. “He’d probably like it, and tell you the taxonomy for it. Maybe an appropriate cultural story, if there is one. He’s a bit nerdy, likes to read a lot like you. He’d be a good friend to have in a place like this.”  </p><p> </p><p>---</p><p> </p><p>The third time Will brings something back, he doesn’t mean to, and wished that he hadn’t. He is seven years old, in the First Grade, and they are reading Rikki Tikki Tavi. </p><p> </p><p>A mongoose, explains Mr. Griffin before they start, is kind of like a weasel hunts snakes for his family. Will nods, thinking of something fiery, long, and gleaming with teeth and the fine hairs of a cat or rabbit. Small, but useful, and Will likes that. He listens carefully to Rikki Tiki Tavi’s vigilance against the cobras Nag and Nagaina, watching for their hoods in the dark. He asks for help getting a copy from the school library, and repeats the lines to himself playing in the yard in the days that follow. </p><p> </p><p>When he comes home on a Thursday in May, he envisions himself as protector of the garden beds at the edge of the house, where heavy-headed orange tiger lilies and neon yellow and maroon coleus push up to hide the white painted sides of the old house. “Nag, come up and dance with death!” he hisses with tiny crooked kid’s teeth, and slays Nag near the edge of the lawn where Nana has planted bamboo that grows out of control in the Southern heat and humidity. </p><p> </p><p>Nana insists that he come inside and wash his hands before supper if he wants to have time with his Daddy tonight. He watches a baseball game with drooping eyes from the crook of his father’s tired body, smelling of oil and saltwater.  </p><p> </p><p>Sleep brings him again to the Indian bungalow, where turmeric and saffron and coriander perfume the air, and the lime and orange trees grow near the Marshal Niel roses and high grass. He sheds his shirt in the wet summer air, and crawls low to be with the musk-rat and the tailor bird, and Rikki Tiki Tavi, looking for Nagaina. Will imagines himself a matching pair to Rikki and his ticked fur coat, hunters alike, and admires the small paws that are now his hands. He darts into the den of the cobras seeking snakes, and wakes to morning with his mission unfulfilled.  </p><p> </p><p>Nagaina follows Will back, coiled in the folds of his sheets, warming her cold scales against his leg. She does not bite when Will pulls himself from the covers to get dressed for the day, nor does she bite when he sits to pull his socks on. </p><p> </p><p>She does when Nana goes to change the linens after he walks around the corner to go to school with his blue backpack. </p><p> </p><p>He remembers there was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on white bread in his lunchbox with an apple juice and a package of fruit snacks that Daddy eats more of than he does in the evenings.  He’s halfway through them in the schoolyard when a police officer crosses the playground in deliberate strides to his side. </p><p> </p><p>And this is where Will Graham’s trouble begins. </p><p> </p><p>--- </p><p> </p><p>It doesn’t make the news, that an elderly woman in Biloxi dies by Indian cobra bite, because nobody wants to talk about the little boy that brought it back. Where did it come from? How did he get it? How did it not bite him? If it were not so strange, it would be all over the evening news. </p><p> </p><p>(<em> What else can you get that doesn’t make sense? </em>)</p><p> </p><p>“Do you know where you found it William?” asks the detective at the police station, while his Daddy is wringing his hands in the corner, encouraged to stop speaking, to stop coaching Will. </p><p> </p><p>“In the garden of the bungalow,” Will says in his small voice again, as he has all day. Again and again and again. </p><p> </p><p>“Will, you have to tell me who gave you that snake. It’s a very dangerous snake, and not one from here,” the detective adds with irritation. “Did you make a friend recently? Is someone asking you to take things to their friends for them?”   </p><p> </p><p>Will, shakes his head, frustrated too. </p><p> </p><p>A stoic looking man in a suit with a buzzcut and a pager who says he’s with the FBI hands Daddy a card, and says to call him if any other strange things keep showing up. <b> <em>Illegal Imports Division</em> </b> is scrawled at the bottom. “Traffickers like using children,” he explains, like that’s all there is to it, and that Will is just hiding a man behind the secret of the snake instead of his nighttime hunt. </p><p> </p><p>Nobody wants to hear that it’s Nagaina, seeking vengeance for her slain mate in the eves of Nana’s house, like he played and dreamt. The stoic man, however, gives him a speculative look, and his unbitten arms, and fervent explanation, and Will thinks if he could just say the right words, maybe someone would believe he’s telling the truth. Things have a way of following him back. He wishes it hadn't, and mourns.</p><p> </p><p>Will struggles to sleep for the rest of the year. So does his Daddy, unaccustomed to not having his Nana watch Will during the days and take care of the particulars. They camp out on the couch and wait for their tiredness to overtake them, sneaking out of the kitchen cabinets and from beneath the dining room table and out the hallway as black clouds of dread. </p><p> </p><p>---</p><p> </p><p>Will sits up, letting the covers slide from him. Doctor Bloom is unflinching in the low light, watching him. The striped sleep shirt, same as ever, is too long at the wrists, and he rolls the sleeves up to pluck a pulse oximeter from his pointer finger. It beeps in protest three times, before turning off for the day. </p><p> </p><p>“I don’t get friends,” Will murmurs. “I get keepers.” </p><p> </p><p>Doctor Bloom smiles thinly, but it’s gentle. How little difficulty she must have, sloughing off adolescent boys’ emotions, for an adolescent boy she has played keeper to for five years. “He was a great surgeon and is a great psychiatrist. His sense of humor is terrible, but he doesn’t take things personally, so I’m sure you can be your usual prickly self. He’ll do his best by you.”</p><p> </p><p>(<em> You’re not so sure he will. No one else has. His best to keep you from decimating yourself against the cage bars? His best to convince you this is all very normal and upstanding? </em>)</p><p> </p><p>Will nods, and slides out of bed.    </p><p> </p><p>---</p><p> </p><p>Will wakes with a flood of rainwater in his bedroom in February during Second Grade. It cascades down the hall and rushes past the front doorstep to slide into the street. He is late getting to school from dutifully soaking up the excess with towels, because the wood floors will warp, or Nana used to say that, so it must be true. Daddy looks for leaks when he gets home from work that night and doesn’t know what to say past shimmering frustration.</p><p> </p><p>He wakes with a bloodied hand full of glass when he dreams of falling from the roof of the warehouse where daddy works about two months later, and has to go to the doctor for stitches. He had picked up a paperweight from the secretary’s desk, something cheap with a painted hummingbird on the inside. He had meant to throw it from atop the warehouse at his Daddy’s boss who likes to yell at his Daddy, who then yells at Will, but he slips when he hesitates.</p><p> </p><p>The final straw for his Daddy is when Will wakes with a full grown Paint horse at the foot of the bed, splotched and dusty from the plains they had ridden together just moments before, staying ahead of a thunderstorm. The dirt had been red with iron, now settled into the creaking planks of wood on the bedroom floor from the weight of hooves. </p><p> </p><p>“What is <em> wrong </em> with you?” Daddy breathes into the air, looking thunderstruck himself at the animal in front of him, taller and more vivid than anything around it. He asks it like it hurts him to admit it. And Will, bless him, tries so hard to explain the feather, and the snake, and the dill plant and Daddy just shakes his head, chin in hand. </p><p> </p><p>---</p><p> </p><p>The man from Illegal Imports Division listens to Will’s explanation again and again and again. </p><p> </p><p>Daddy calls him four times before he comes for a visit, with increasing volume, about how there’s fucking horses now, and should he expect something worse next time, and just how does somebody get a second grader to traffic snakes and horses and expensive office decorations anyway? </p><p> </p><p>“From the top, Will,” he says, friendly in a way he hadn’t been at the police station. “Tell me the dream about the horse.” </p><p> </p><p>At least ten other people in nice suits watch from the surrounding tables, multiplying with each retelling over the course of the week. They don’t listen to his story, or at least it doesn’t feel like they do. They look at him in increasing fascination, turning from skepticism to awe when the Paint horse is brought in front of them, and the photos of Nagaina, and the crane feather. It’s all circumstantial, says one of them, but certainly a curiosity. They never bring back things that are alive, says another. The father could be lying. The kid’s just got a vivid imagination and a neighbor with an animal barn to pull pranks, right? </p><p> </p><p>“Can you do me a favor, Will?” asks Illegal Imports Division, stoic as ever. “Can you stay a night with us?” he says with a cajoling manner that doesn’t fit his firm, cragged face. “You’re not in any trouble, I promise. We just want to know what else you can bring, if you can. If nothing happens, we’ll try watching again at the house. Just to be sure no one’s using you.” </p><p> </p><p>“Just one night,” says a third, who’s card reads <b> <em>Laboratory Division</em> </b> , with no specifications. While the others have been firmly polite but ambivalent, this one’s face is hungry with opportunity. <em> I know something you don’t know </em>, says every blink, every smile. “Just to make sure it’s true.” </p><p> </p><p>Will is too young to recognize this for what it is.</p><p> </p><p>---</p><p> </p><p>Doctor Bloom takes Will to the conference room, once he’s had time to sort out what particular ratty t-shirt he wants to go with his lounge pants and soft shoes. He is not allowed to have hard or sharp objects - not unless he brings them back from wherever Will Graham brings things back from. </p><p> </p><p>(<em> “For your safety,” they tell you, but all you really hear is “for ours.” </em>)</p><p> </p><p>The conference room is consistently an uncomfortable place to be, and only bad news comes from it. New procedures, rules, politely worded suggestions that are less suggestions and more demands, and files and files and files of things that upper management wants Will to think about. They can’t control the trajectory of sleep, but they can control the environment around him, and that’s as good as anything. Everything’s filtered by the time it reaches this space. </p><p> </p><p>The last time he was here, Doctor Bloom apologetically informs him that she is moving to an advisory position. There are some concerns about Will fixating on her interests, and bringing back items too tailored to her taste. </p><p> </p><p>“Not good for your health,” Doctor Bloom says. </p><p> </p><p>“Inappropriate,” says Doctor Chilton.</p><p> </p><p>“Concerning,” says Doctor Sutcliffe.</p><p> </p><p>---</p><p> </p><p>They check Will for anything that might be on him other than his clothing to sleep in. They check under his arms, under his tongue, in his ears, and in his pajamas. The tongue depressor tastes like an ice cream stick. Someone thinks to comb his hair at the last minute to avoid being negligent, when a lady on staff complains they didn’t even let him use a toothbrush yet. </p><p> </p><p>The bed is large and comfy and pristine white, and there is nothing in it save his pillows, his blankets, his book to read, and him. No windows, or side tables, or lamps, though a camera glints from the four corners where the walls meet.</p><p> </p><p>Will shrugs it off with the sour stomach clenching at his insides. It’s an experiment, he justifies it to himself. It’s only one night, and he can go home. Daddy will be happier when he knows what Will told him is true. If this is how he proves it, then he can be brave. </p><p> </p><p>Tonight, he is reading <b> <em>Treasure Island</em> </b> <b>, </b>because gold and silver and other pirate belongings sound outlandish and like something the adults can’t get easily for themselves. If he reads enough, he hopes it will stick to the inside of his head, and bleed out when he sleeps. Long John Silver and Jim talk in riddles and adventure, tall sails creak in the pages, and Will struggles to manifest the images as clearly as he usually does between words. It takes a long time to nod off with nothing but the quiet of an empty room and two wall sconces at the door that stay lit up until sleep takes him, but not far. </p><p> </p><p>In the morning, he brings them gouts of hot, wet ash. He doesn’t dream of pirates, but instead of Mount Saint Helens, flooding down the hillside like he saw on a TV program last month. </p><p> </p><p>(<em> “Today marks the 10 year anniversary of the tragedy that would forever change the face of Spirit Lake and the southern Washington community,” says the news reporter, hair blonde and high to heaven, and you, transfixed, watch the stock film behind her and her blush pinked cheekbones. “We’d like to take a moment to remember the 57 people that lost their lives to the powerful volcanic eruption and mudslides that would remove more than 1,300 feet from the mountain’s height before it came to a halt.” </em>) </p><p> </p><p>Will didn’t know how to escape the room, floundering on the island of the bed. It fills with steaming tephra and forest debris until he wakes panting, cemented with burning mud, sheets a mess of grey and brown, and sulphurous stinking glacial water. It’s all gone terribly wrong, just like the rain in the house, or the snake in the bed, and Will, just seven years old, cries and tries to scramble free of the broken branches from unseen trees and bits of pumice.</p><p> </p><p>People in green scrubs open the door to comfort him. They say he’s done extremely well, and wipe the scratching mud from his face with soft cloths and testing swabs. He gets to use a fancy shower in a long locker room where the soap smells like pine. (<em> You cringe a little, mud still in your nostrils, the boiling of hundreds of trees, sweeping into the Kalama River and your featureless white bedroom. </em>) The two lab techs watching him apologize, and offer things from their own stash like they’re all friends. </p><p> </p><p>He gets a hot cake breakfast from McDonalds, extra syrup, bacon and all, and feels ok. They try to help him laugh off the morning, like Will’s not still a bit red eyed and anxious. Will, wanting to be liked and be a cool older person, nods and adds more butter to his hot cakes. </p><p> </p><p>“You did great,” says one tech, badge flipped over. Will feels bad that he doesn’t know what to call him, but it was only for the one night, right? “I would have been scared too!” </p><p> </p><p>“That’s really cool what you did,” says the other, patting Will on the back. He keeps his badge on a lanyard, stuffed in his pocket, nameless too.    </p><p> </p><p>Will wants that to be true. Will wants so badly to bring something useful back, after so many strange things that aren’t benign, meant for cheap recipes or lining his room like a nest.  </p><p> </p><p>---</p><p> </p><p>Inside, Director Purnell, Doctor Chilton, Doctor Sutcliffe, and the person Will presumes is Doctor Bloom’s friend and his newest in a lineup of doctors sit in the kind of silence that follows intense argument. There’s a lot of ego between the four seats, and rarely do three of them agree. Will shrinks under the weight of their gazes.</p><p> </p><p>Doctor Bloom’s friend stands, extends a hand, and smiles. He is wearing a windowpane check suit, threads of red glaring out from dark navy blue like sunset between duck hunting blinds. Will thinks of mallards on the bayous, their green heads, the unexpected flash of purple from under their wings.</p><p> </p><p>“And here he is now,” he says, English accented and smooth. Something from a Bond film, like he watched with Daddy on the couch. (<em> “Make it so, number one,” you think with some flippancy </em>.) Will doesn’t know enough about outside these days to place it, only that it slides between vowels, silky, clouded.      </p><p> </p><p>“Doctor Lecter,” Kade starts, frowning, like he’s spoken out of turn, that his extended hand offends her, “this is Will.”</p><p> </p><p>Will, not often acknowledged first in a room, hiding behind his glasses, nods, and gives the proffered hand a squeeze. Doctor Lecter has hot hands, as though sitting on them, keeping steel hot to strike when needed, but only when ready.</p><p> </p><p>“Please, Will,” he says, smile softening a bit. “We’ll be spending a great deal of time together. Call me Hannibal.”  </p><p> </p><p>---</p><p> </p><p>The first night in the lab turns into two where nothing happens, which turns into three where something does, which turns into his Daddy having to insist on seeing Will and making sure he’s alright. </p><p> </p><p>Will tells him about the morning glory vine that grows on a fence near the elementary school at home, and how he tangled his foot in it trying to climb the fence and get away from something the night before. (<em> You don’t remember what it was - only that it was coming, and you just can’t run fast enough. </em>) It’s wilted by sun up, but undoubtedly wrapped whip-tight around his legs, trussing him in green and bright blue trumpet flowers.   </p><p> </p><p>A parade of excited people talk about matching soil content, crystal structures in the mud that are a perfect fit. When he brings back the vine, it displays all the qualities of only just having been cut. </p><p> </p><p>“Will Graham has...quite the imagination,” says a woman who introduces herself as Kade Purnell, and director of a very special program for the FBI that Will has caught the interest of. She pets the curling hair on top of his head when she comes to stand closer to him. Will feels a bit like a dog, but also that Kade has never touched an animal before. He wants to bite her, but his Daddy is watching, and that wouldn’t be nice.</p><p> </p><p>“It’s in his best interests to be put in a special kind of care,” she explains. “The incident with your mother will only be the first like it.” </p><p> </p><p>“What makes y’so sure?” asks Daddy. “Ain’t seen nothin’ like it, and he was rightly sorry, ma’am. Can’t imagine t’was on purpose.”</p><p> </p><p>“It never is,” she says. </p><p> </p><p>Will, feeling the burning mud again, but not the comfort of nestlings’ down, is embarrassed to realize that’s true. He looks at his feet, and let’s the adults talk, and tries to think of the smell of orange and lime without the acrid tinge of snake’s venom.  </p><p> </p><p>---</p><p> </p><p>“A pleasure,” Will grouses, looking down at the point of his shoe coming from just beneath the hem of the black sweatpants. It’s so hard to keep eye contact, and the insistence of this new person is so heavy.</p><p> </p><p>“I’m sure it will be,” says Doctor Lecter. When Will considers him closer, Doctor Lecter’s (<em> who you will </em> not <em> call Hannibal’s </em>) eyes are muddied with brown and crane red. “I hear you have quite the talent, Will. I look forward to helping you hone it.” </p><p> </p><p>“Honing knives realigns a blade,” Will ponders, “rather than sharpens it. Do you think I need realigning, Doctor Lecter?” </p><p> </p><p>“Do you?” says Doctor (<em> Hannibal </em>) Lecter.</p><p> </p><p>---</p><p> </p><p>Will Graham is left in government care before he is eight years old. They move him to a compound on the East Coast, where more nice interns try to keep him company, but more official looking people and doctors try to give him specific tasks to utilize his skill. According to Director Kade Purnell, he has a great many things to bring back. It is unclear to him how much he will need to before he can go back home. </p><p> </p><p>His Daddy initially tries to keep up mail correspondence with him, sending postcards between port town and jobs - in the absence of Will, he doesn’t tether himself anywhere, the same way Will’s tether at night slips off and he floats somewhere else. It's easy to forget,when there's nothing demanding your attention, and the checks keep rolling in.</p><p> </p><p>Will tries not to take this personally. Will tries to do his best, and hand off valuable things as they arrive, fresh from his sleep. </p><p> </p><p>He is eighteen as of last May, has had more than four doctors fail to direct him such that he can use his skill with any sort of consistency or purpose. It becomes a running joke that if you need a wrench, Will Graham will bring you back a hammer. (<em> “What is </em> wrong <em> with you,” says Daddy, over and over again. </em>)</p><p> </p><p>“Not to worry,” says Doctor Lecter, before Will can answer his question. “I know just the thing.”  </p><p> </p><p>---</p><p> </p><p>Will wakes with a dead mallard by him, still soft, neck broken firmly at the center bend. He had wrung its neck when it flew past in a glaring crimson expanse of reeds and tide water, startled by it. He tells the morning tech who checks his heart rate and his night time gifts something else. </p><p> </p><p>“Poor guy,” he mourns, clutching his fingers close to himself, under the sheet. He cannot stop their shaking, and pulls the pulse oximeter off before they can see. “I must have rolled onto him.” </p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. come, then, and search out your sheep</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Warnings: Hannibal is blasphemous. Hannibal is an adventurous eater. Hannibal is not a nice man.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Hannibal Lecter, not quite yet Doctor, is enjoying the night off before the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, and is hands deep in the chest cavity of one Claudia Donati.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He means to remove from the right middle lobe of her lung - the asymmetry of the chest cavity has always rather vexed him, and her comment on his crooked teeth a few months before puts him in a mind to fix trivial things such as this. He must be quick though - it would be a shame to lose the day off. Advent in Italy isn't something to be missed.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>(<em> You also suffer a craving for and are a great fan of a Napoli Zuppa 'e suffritto -  in addition to the lung, her heart and liver look quite healthy. May as well partake while you’re in here. The weather is cold, she won’t be using them very shortly, and it </em> is <em> a feasting holiday. </em>) </p>
<p> </p>
<p>He is approaching the end of his studies at Università degli Studi di Firenze. His specialty is trauma. He thinks this is appropriate for the abundances of it he has gathered and can now share in secret humor. Further, Hannibal likes the challenge of snatching the fading synapses of a living body from death. It’s akin to stealing from the table of God. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>In that respect, Hannibal supposes he has some kind of belief in a higher power. Calling it faith is a reach - God is so boring with how He structures His creation and leaves it to its own devices. It’s much more fun to subvert the script. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>So Hannibal makes his own entertainments. Ergo, the popping of the mediastinal parietal pleura and visceral pleura from the tissue beneath him. But religious holidays, even ones he doesn’t hold to personally, are pervasive and subversive of the banal march of time. Looking at a strawberry-blonde curl over the bloodied, distorted breast of Miss Donati, he considers Mary and her coming feast. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Tomorrow’s her big day. She’ll be pregnant with Christ by no real consent or conception of her own, teeming with holy motherhood. Modern theological debate on apocryphal texts suggests she is about 13 at the time of this most sacred of ravishings. <em> L'Immacolata Concezione </em>. What a fate for a girl. What a time to be pulled from the safety of youth, from a mother’s hip, to become the bride of creation. What branch from the tree of Judea did she fall from to deserve it? </p>
<p> </p>
<p>(<em> The skeptic in you rails against the premise entirely - what family member had actively deflowered her, and raised her up to new levels of sainthood to hide his lie? </em>)  </p>
<p> </p>
<p>The lobe of lung steams in his hand, still white and pink and fresh. Hannibal wraps it in wax paper, and in turn, Claudia Donati, to go to their final resting spaces - the sear of a skillet and the cloister of a small chapel respectively, just in time for lunch tomorrow and the services in the morning.  </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Unlike Claudia Donati, Mary has done nothing. She is a child - he did not feel like much of an adult at that age, ill fortunes or not. She is an accident of fate. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>He will deny Miss Donati the corona of gold stars he had kept for decoration, despite his initial imaginings of this scene. It seems unkind to the young lady she was meant to mirror. No, Hannibal does not particularly believe that blindly anointed Mary pulls her own anointed child from the cosmos to save man, but it does not change the speculative pity that drives him later to draw her, hands <em> et indignor. </em></p>
<p> </p>
<p>---</p>
<p> </p>
<p>At first glance, Will Graham isn’t much to look at. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>He is thin, slovenly in the way that any teenager with a social mandate to wear loungewear would be, and he hides behind a pair of acrylic framed glasses and messy brown curls like he means to become a wall that they are merely displayed on. His rubber soled sneakers squeak against the travertine tiles when he shifts his weight. This is all very deliberate - Will does not want to be seen, and invariably, everyone surrounding him insists that he should be. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>When the boy bothers to look up and meet Hannibal’s gaze, he has shuttered eyes. Green and blue, but opaque, like sea ice pressed up against the shore that’s waiting to harden over and hide what’s been pushed up beneath it. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Hannibal gives him a nod, and handshake, and a bland platitude of help. He is not yet resolved to do so, but leading with negativity never really cheers any hearts, and this one is clearly in need of cheering. “I hear you have quite the talent, Will,” he says. “I look forward to helping you hone it.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The boy considers him.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Honing knives realigns a blade,” says Will, “rather than sharpens it. Do you think I need realigning, Doctor Lecter?”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Do you?” asks Hannibal, surprised. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Curious.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>---</p>
<p> </p>
<p>When he is approached by Doctor Alana Bloom, Hannibal finds the entire premise laughable. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>A young Southern boy has proven capable of manifesting matter from nowhere other than dreaming thoughts. He is not only not the first to do it, but with measurable certainty the most prolifically skilled, and Alana speaks this like a rule of physics, the unwavering pull of gravity. An entire government program has been arranged geared towards this child, and finding others like him, and Alana has been the faithful spectator to the boy’s growth since not long after completing her psychiatric degree and certifications. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>It’s a full time job for the right candidate - full federal benefits, exorbitant pay, and a handsome pension in exchange for discretion, and the doctor’s undivided attention. Psychiatric skills required. Additional triage, surgical, and general internal medicine preferred. Commutes accepted within 2 hours of the Washington DC area for qualified applicants. It sounds like a Craigslist ad, made all the worse by the word-of-mouth only initial screening process. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>When his favorite protege comes to him and asks if there’s any chance he would take up providing mental and physical medical care to one patient exclusively, it’s not at all what he expects to hear as the terms. They make plans for charcuterie and wine after office hours, and to hear out Alana’s proposal. He laughs incredulously following her initial explanation, one dry thing, and Alana looks so very wounded. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Does it include future relocation costs to China Lake or Roswell? Perhaps a secret base in the Appalachians?” he asks, and she at least finds it funny to snort, and blow a loose hair from her red face. She is embarrassed. That Alana has fallen prey to this is hilarious and also an embarrassment of his own, like he should chide her for it, and punish the FBI and their institutions for fabricating the whole thing.   </p>
<p> </p>
<p>(<em> You have a habit of punishing the FBI regardless - dropping a few extra bodies is hardly more than extra credit at this point. Do what you love, and you never have to work a day in your life, yes? </em>)</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“I know, I know,” she says, with a glassy-eyed twist of a smile. “It sounds totally ridiculous. But haven’t you wondered why I have a practice of one patient? Don’t you think I’d be skeptical of the authenticity of this?” </p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Why the need for trauma expertise?” he asks in turn, pressing his advantage. “You have your MD in Psychiatry, but hardly anything but CPR and some pharmacology to recommend you.” </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Her mouth gives a little lift at the corner. “Wasn’t necessary when I came on.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Hannibal tilts his head, listening. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Not everything he brings back is safe,” Alana tries to clarify. “It’s been getting worse the older he gets. Sometimes it hurts him. Sometimes it hurts others. He means well, but outside of the context of a dream, well,” she takes another sip of wine, “creating is much more dangerous.” </p>
<p> </p>
<p>---</p>
<p> </p>
<p>In the absence of Will, escorted back to his own section of the building by a kind-eyed woman in burgundy scrubs, the conference room is alive with ill humors. It waits pointedly for someone to drain the poison. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Hannibal supposes he’s the adult in the room with the most skill with removing abscesses, metaphorical or medical alike. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>“How many doctors were there before Doctor Bloom?” he asks.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Director Purnell tightens her frown, girding herself for an argument. It’s reasonable - he watches the other two gentlemen in the room puff up as though personally affronted. “Three. Doctors Chilton and Sutcliffe as a pair initially, but Will didn’t respond to them very well. Doctor Bloom has had the longest tenure working with Will directly.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>"And the other?"</p>
<p> </p>
<p>"Inconsequential. Will wouldn't work with them." As good as a death knell, then, this child’s caprice. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Children are not overtly fond of being told what to do,” Frederick Chilton sneers as though he’s been slapped, leaning back in his chair. “It’s all a good time until the chores are required.” </p>
<p> </p>
<p>(<em> And what manner of chores did you ask of an eight-year old, you think. Certainly not just to pick up his toys. Certainly not just to fold his clothes. But </em> go to bed <em> , and all that you’ve been told it might entail? That likely is a </em> very <em> complex task. </em>) </p>
<p> </p>
<p>“The problem is two-fold,” explains Frederick, who Hannibal knows to be officious on his good days, and a braggart on his worst. He balances a pen between his fingers, twirling it. Hannibal wants to jab it in his eye, and gives him his attention with raised eyebrows, politely considering. “Will is...resistant to guiding, and difficult to connect with to encourage it. His capacity for his skill is well beyond any one else recorded. He can bring back living things as much as inanimate objects, but he obsesses easily, and doesn’t translate content given to him in a useful way.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“No shit,” comes a huff from the other side of the table. “I think all the techs have adopted a dog at this point,” laughs Sutcliffe, interrupting. “The half of the lab staff that don't have some kind of a sign-up sheet you have to join before they’ll even introduce you to Will.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Alana smiles, rueful, apologetic for both. Hannibal appreciates her awareness. “He can’t keep them,” she explains. “The dogs, I mean. He manifests a lot of them in comparison to everything else. He’s not allowed to keep anything he brings back, but the techs that know him best try to give him some kind of contact.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Frederick waves his hand, eyes narrow and irritated. “Yes, yes, but the problem is he brings back things randomly or things he wants intensely, but never something he’s deliberately introduced to. It’s not like I can submit a request for something valuable and expect results, and <em> that </em>, my dear Doctor Bloom, is the backbone of this program.”    </p>
<p> </p>
<p>(<em> You take this from the conversation instead: That, my dear, is your failure. That, my dear, is the value of the young man sent back to his room like he broke a rule instead of becoming a sort of small capricious creator god. </em> <b> <em>Allegedly</em> </b> <em> , you remind yourself. Alana grimaces, but you - well you consider while looking at Frederick what kinds of dishes require a deliberate neglect, failing up as it were. Not for today, but it’s good to have aspiring future plans. </em>) </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Alana remains pointedly professional, but the seams begin to show. “There’s not a university on the planet that can definitely say how dreams work. It’s not like lucid dreaming is an after-school sport you just need to get better at.” </p>
<p> </p>
<p>“You remove the obstacles to content you want to feed back,” Frederick bites back. “You remove distractions, limit the scope.” </p>
<p> </p>
<p>The frustration begins to take over her face. She has an array of freckles that become vivid when it does. “He’s a person, not a spreadsheet you can select cells in to run formulas on. You don’t just turn off the human experience and get handfuls of gold, or the cure for cancer, or whatever other rare earths and substances you put in front of him as print-outs,” Alana argues, disgusted, hands and arms spread out. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Poor Alana, he thinks, wanting good things for this quiet boy. Maybe another time, maybe another life where the universe hadn’t fixed it’s eye on him. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>---</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“The first thing he brought me was a peony,” says Alana, tasteful in her shirt dress and sweater. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>She looks like an advertisement, as though she should be offering vermouth and cointreau from overly warm brustroked posters. Perhaps cigarettes, or Pan-Am flights to the Caribbean. There were several such plastered to the walls in Paris during his adolescence that he admired, even as the cynical mass market things that they were. So too does he appreciate this American girl-next-door, his brightest pupil. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Her hands cup, approximating. “Huge - and pink and just as fresh as the ones my mother grew at her house back in North Carolina. It even smelled right,” she trails off, looking bothered. “I had wanted to introduce myself, so I brought family photos, and he picked up on that one thing out of dozens and dozens of pictures. I think he was about twelve years old then, and he told me I didn’t look like myself.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“You wanted him to see that you were a child once too,” Hannibal intuits, turning his glass, watching for the frosted maker’s mark to come sit parallel to the edge of the counter. He swirls the contents once it does, fragrant gewurztraminer dancing inside.  </p>
<p> </p>
<p>She smiles, inclining her head. “He brought me a peacock, a couple months after I started working with him,” says Alana. “I’d stay nights, sometimes still do. He’s most honest first thing in the morning, when he hasn’t decided how he feels about what he brings back yet. I had been reading Flannery O’Connor to him... I think the bird surprised him more than me. They tuck their heads in on themselves normally, but this one was up under his chin, and he had to be careful to not startle it.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>And what an image that is, a white faced, dark haired younger Will with the shining blue head of a bird in the crook of each other’s throats, a fan of tail feathers a new blanket for him to be under.  </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Alana takes a considering sip, and bites her lip against the acid of it. “Will struggles to fall asleep after the unusual retrievals, so we started reading together a lot. He had woken with a hot coal in his mouth not long before and everyone was struggling to convince him it was safe to go back to bed,” she explains, fingers twirling the stem of her wine glass. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>“It wasn’t,” says Hannibal. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>“It wasn’t,” Alana concedes, and looks into her glass.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>---</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Director Purnell gives Alana a glance that speaks of disdain. “The other pressing issue is also a factor of his mental health. The situation is such that Will Graham cannot leave this facility,” she says, looking very grim. “We need someone who can help him retain some kind of positive perspective in spite of that and ensure the program remains secure.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Thinking of ways to geld your colt, Director?” Hannibal finds the words ripping from his mouth, sharp around his crooked smirk. Emotional animals make for unproductive beasts of burden, after all.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Frederick laughs, even as Director Purnell’s mouth becomes a sneer of displeasure. “Do you often think of patients as livestock, Hannibal?” he asks.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>All the time, Hannibal muses, but no one really refutes it though. Pots calling the kettle black, he thinks. Alana presses her lips together, Sutcliffe plays at boredom, and Frederick just can’t <em> quite </em>escape his own cleverness enough to read the room. Hannibal thinks he understands. Children are meant to be seen, not heard, and things have been fine while Will Graham is seen as a child. But Will Graham is becoming a man now, and might have a mind of his own after all, and time is running out. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Not a lot to do with your time but waste it when everyone’s waiting for night to fall, Hannibal guesses. A bright boy, with brighter thoughts, wasting away in an ad hoc dormitory nestled into the ugliness of something made for business parks. Will does not have Notre Dame de Paris to be trapped in to contain his horrors, nor the austere parapets of a Château d'If to rot in - just a corporate office with all the trappings of one. Manila folders, shift workers, middle management, and nowhere to go. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>(<em> Tick-tock, Director. </em>)</p>
<p> </p>
<p>---</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Alana’s recommendation and Hannibal’s curriculum vitae with publications must be stronger than he thinks. While the Director clearly dislikes Hannibal’s frankness of spirit, and alas, Hannibal cannot bear to be any less so in the circumstances, she gives him a substantial outline of the program’s successes and challenges to this point, and a very brief history of the boy in question before becoming what amounts to government property. It reads like an obituary. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Allow me a few days to consider,” he asks, and everyone makes noises about that being reasonable, but the non-disclosure agreement he has to sign, unrepresented, to even leave the property is monstrous. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>---</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Hannibal pulls away from the parking lot in a rosy sunset, drives through the guarded gate and down the road, and relishes the light-burn of the sun to the west as he drives ever north. The pine, hemlock, and oak of the Maryland countryside pass him by in the dark, only defined in silhouette. Schubert is rising in the speakers - it is too early in the fall for <em> Winterreise </em>, but today’s introductions speak to the end of youth, and Hannibal finds parts of the tune stuck in his head before he clears the metal detectors at the building’s entrance. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>He considers now instead what he in his prime stands to lose.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>(<em> Oh, only self-respect </em> , <em> if it is anything less than what has been promised. </em>)</p>
<p> </p>
<p>First and foremost, it brings him no joy to think of working in conjunction with Frederick Chilton, nor his compatriot Donald Sutcliffe. Alana clearly has made a place at the table for herself, kind but feisty thing that she is, but holds little political sway. A decade’s worth of crude protocol has undoubtedly stagnated their processes, and the likelihood of Hannibal being able to extricate his duties from the mess is doubtful. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>He is also rather old for becoming a physician and headmaster of sorts to an adolescent boy, which is the bulk of the responsibility. Yes, Will’s skill is tied to sleep (<em> if any of this is true; </em> douteux, <b> absurde</b> <em> , you think </em>), but sleeping comes with or without a doctor’s touch. The success of his taking the position at all requires Will to be suggestable, not just impressionable. Dreams are ephemeral and fleeting, and while his skills with psychic driving are not a thing to disregard, Hannibal doesn’t want to spend even the scantest of hours laboring in failure. He has pursuits of his own after all. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Hannibal will lose the benefits of a regular practice, free time, the lecture travel, <em> the dinner games </em>. His primary source of entertainment will become contingent on Will himself not being dull. There hardly seems time for much else.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>How dreadful, the fluorescent lights of the facility. How utterly boring, to spend a decade with scholarly papers, textbooks, and underpaid graduate technical staff as your only friends. It’s a wonder that Will Graham can dream at all. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>The city lights do nothing to make him feel closer to home - his thoughts remain turned to the serious young person silently screaming to be turned loose afield, freed from cold veneration. Hannibal pictures dirt caught in the crescent of hooves, and the absolute solid glint of horse shoes bedded into feet by the force of nails.  </p>
<p> </p>
<p>---</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The bottle drains - more wine than Hannibal would typically take in on a weeknight himself, but he’s in good company, and the conversation so strange that he finds himself in a substantially better mood than when it started. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>He stands, hands to either side at his prep table. “I’ve found this all very interesting, and I’ll hear out the proposal from the director, but I must ask,” and Hannibal stops for effect, taking his own sip of wine, chewing at the sharpness of it, “what’s made you step away? What did you see that made your allegiance flag?”    </p>
<p> </p>
<p>She sighs, and it comes from her toes to her knees, hips, belly, to her mouth, hollowing her out.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Will sees too close sometimes. Details that don’t really matter without context, but that he pulls out of thin air. We’ve gotten to know each other very well, and the things he brings back are too tied to me, and less to what the institute wants.” To this, she chews the corner of her thumb, a nervous habit that Hannibal forgives. “I’ve tried to guide him to different things, but he always falls back on something he wants for himself, or worse thinks<em> I </em> want personally, not as a government employee.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>She shakes her head, and peers over the glass at Hannibal. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>“I can’t help him,” she sighs. “But, I think you're the type of man who can.”  </p>
<p> </p>
<p>---</p>
<p> </p>
<p>There’s a courtyard of sorts, in the center of the building where the high floors of the structure create an enclosing shadowed square beneath that houses two reflecting pools full of lilypads and fish. There is a staleness to the space, as it is afforded no breeze nor running water other than the gentle lapping of the reflecting pool against their concrete barriers. At the sun’s zenith, Hannibal imagines that the light still does not quite make it to the bottom to warm the benches that flank each side of the water.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Will Graham, finally out from under the eye of the others, sits across from him, looking directly at him in a way Hannibal has assumed is uncharacteristic of him - perhaps he is mistaken. The gaze is less opaque than it was on first blush, a calm lake now with muted depth.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Good morning, Will. I trust you slept last night?” he asks, leaning forward to balance his elbows on his knees. It’s familiar, comfortable, like any therapy session sans the promise of supernatural deliveries. Something to ground himself against the surreality of the situation. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Will doesn’t respond, just slouches, frowning, but still laser focused, like he can see the shape of Hannibal beyond the material if he can just watch long enough. What a suspicious thing, this sorrowful, sleeping naif. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>One of the morning staff, a man with <em> Jimmy </em> scrawled in embroidered cursive on the front pocket of his bright blue scrubs and a charming manner of quick speech, informs him before bringing him here that Will has had an unpleasant morning, oscillating between taciturn and ominously quiet since waking, and apologizes. He thinks Hannibal will find Will to be uncooperative. ( <em> “In an absolute mood,” says Jimmy, head shaking. “He doesn’t do well with accidents.” </em>) He had brought back a duck of some kind, dead on arrival. It hasn’t happened before, and the incident clearly disturbs him. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Hannibal wishes he had been present. Seeing is believing, and while the earnestness and exorbitant cost that has been pushed into this facility is an indicator of the truth behind Will’s presence here, Hannibal finds the fantastical more appetizing with a proper taste. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>No matter - he will push forward with his own criteria. This must be worthwhile by his own terms. From the cold, stalwart glance of Will in front of him, he expects the feeling is mutual. Hannibal smiles, intrigued, and pulls something from his physician’s bag. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>“I’d like to try something, Will,” he says, a small book between his hands, “before either of us makes any great efforts to connect with each other.” At Will’s faltering look, he smiles more, eyes creasing. Not the words he expected to hear. “Ah yes, I am sure the other candidates before Doctor Bloom were not so shy of you, rather the opposite, but I have an active practice already, and I want to know for sure that I can help you before removing myself from it.” He gestures at the surroundings. “I am told this is a full-time appointment, day and night.”  </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Will shrugs, a prickly thing like he cannot shove his clavicle deeply enough into his own neck. “I’m sorry it’s such a nuisance for you,” he mutters, eyes cutting away to the glimmer of the fish, lazily wandering in the shadowed dark of the pool behind Hannibal. “I’d hate to keep you from a busy schedule.”  </p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Hardly,” Hannibal says with a hum. “But it seems what you need requires a particular...resonance, shall we say, that you’re not likely to chime at for just anyone. Dreams are fickle things, and while I’m a capable doctor, your mind might not be the type to simply be directed,” and with that, he reaches to hand Will the book with a flourish.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><b> <em>Grimm’s Fairy Tales</em> </b> shines from the embossed red linen.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“It reaches out instead for something to connect to,” Hannibal explains.  </p>
<p> </p>
<p>There’s an offended pause - Hannibal admires Will’s control of it. “This is a children’s story,” Will says with another of his shy looks, shrinking into himself with Hannibal’s perceived soft rejection. He is very delicate with the tome though, respectful of its age. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>“A first edition of the Rackham version, bought in New York while I was on a lecture circuit,” Hannibal agrees. “Sixty tales in this one, as opposed to the 210 shown in the late 1800s, so not so great a number to work through in a couple of days. Doctor Bloom tells me you’re a quick reader.” </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Will shrugs again, embarrassed. His ears redden easily. Hannibal is charmed by it. “Usually heavier stuff,” he complains, “Some Vonnegut, Dickens, the classics. There’s some things they don’t let me have, but it’s better than nothing.”      </p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Humor me,” replies Hannibal. “Behind every good children’s fable is a lesson. I’d like to see which one resonates with you, if any. I’ll stay the night tonight, tomorrow, and perhaps a third if it takes that long to stick. They say one out of every three nights is typical for your midnight wanderings, is that correct?” </p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Yeah,” says Will in a sigh. “More these days than when it started, but not every night.” He thumbs to the index, eyes scrolling through names. “Thank god,” he mutters. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>---</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Hannibal has never had much need for sleep, and rarely dreams. He would congratulate himself for the spectacular efficiency of his mind and body, but in the absence of medical clarity and the presence of the occasional test to watch for amyloid plaques, he merely knocks on wood and laughs when explaining to colleagues and the rare few friends. It wouldn’t do to jinx himself. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Tonight, this is fortuitous. There’s so much to read from Alana’s recent notes, the procedural documentation that follows all of Will’s waking hours, and from his frowning face in the shadow of his coverlet. He would look much younger were it not for the crease between his eyes, so furiously furrowed. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>When he leaves Will the morning before with his homework, Hannibal makes a trip back to his home to prepare an overnight bag and to make the appropriate arrangements for existing client appointments.  He cooks himself dinner, prepares a breakfast to travel with, and stays away as long as he thinks he can before his subject of the night goes to bed. He anticipates a better result this way.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>(<em> Performing to an audience is so stressful, isn’t it, Will? </em>) </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Upon return to the facility, the evening’s tech, still on shift before midnight, gives him what feels to be a very rote explanation of Will’s sleeping quarters, hands him her notes. The boy himself is already asleep - clearly accustomed to people coming and going with no regard to him. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Nothing goes in or out without record. (<em> “You know, figuring out what he made.” </em> ) Specific details of items that are not the bed itself, Will’s clothing, or Will himself are logged for consistency. ( <em> “Yeah, the side chair was totally different one day, and we’ve had to write everything down since then.” </em> ) If anyone who is inside the room for observation leaves, they must take anything they brought with them. ( <em> “He hides things sometimes.” </em> ) Meals, activities, and vitals are recorded at least three times a day. ( <em> “Gotta know if anything in particular upsets him or if he’s already off-kilter. Looks pretty standard stressy Will tonight, so I don’t think you should expect something crazy.” </em>) </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Hannibal thanks her, and sends her on her way. There are no strong lights to read under, only a pair of wall sconces that cast a gentle muted glow. Not ideal, but not terrible - he is a night creature himself. He settles in to read the oldest report in the stack of notable incidents, titled “<em> Tephra, 1980 Accumulation” </em>, and it’s so fantastical that Hannibal finds himself engrossed despite himself.  </p>
<p> </p>
<p>---</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <b> <em>Short Form: Thursday Evening - September 12th</em> </b>
</p>
<p><b> <em>Subject: </em> </b> <em> REM-Bough - Eikthyrnir - 18 </em></p>
<p><b> <em>STAFF:</em> </b> <em> B. Katz, Senior Technical </em></p>
<p> </p>
<p><b> <em>Evening Meal: </em> </b> <em> <span class="u">Chicken Parmesan with Spinach</span>. No salt, no additional vegetable, grains, or fruit.  </em></p>
<p><b> <em>Meal Notes:</em> </b> <em> Ate about half - said he wasn’t hungry. Assume he’s got some nerves about the staff changes. Downed a 240ml glass of  <span class="u">2% skim milk</span> before curfew.  </em></p>
<p> </p>
<p><b> <em>Activity Notes:</em> </b> <em> The usual reading. Looks like a book of fairy tales - got about 20 pages shy of the end of it before he drifted off at 10:42 pm and I removed it. Please check external room locker to return.   </em></p>
<p> </p>
<p><b> <em>Vitals at Curfew:</em> </b> </p>
<p><b> <em>BP: </em> </b> <em> 121/84 </em></p>
<p><b> <em>Heart:</em> </b> <em> 64 BPM  </em></p>
<p><b> <em>Oxygenation:</em> </b> <em> 99% </em></p>
<p><b> <em>Temp: </em> </b> <em> 98.1 </em></p>
<p> </p>
<p><b> <em>Additional Notes:</em> </b> <em> Informed by Doctor Bloom that a Doctor Lecter will be taking a night watch in the room. I’ve left the registered </em> <span class="u"> <em> brown </em> </span> <em> <span class="u"> chair</span> and </em> <span class="u"> <em> white </em> </span> <em> <span class="u"> side table</span> to the right of the door, as well as t<span class="u">wo (2) bottles of </span> </em> <em> <span class="u">water</span>, sealed </em> <em> . He has been provided a call button, and instructions for how to lock up if he needs to leave the room. Digital log updated at 11:14pm. -Katz </em></p>
<p> </p>
<p>---</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Will turns Grimm’s Fairy Tales in his hands again. He has long, soft fingers that rasp on the edges of yellowed pages. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>“What are you looking to get from this?” he asks quietly. It’s a good question. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>“What you think the most about,” says Hannibal, like that’s a clear answer.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>---</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Will wakes around 3:46 am, wide eyed. He doesn’t speak, only clamps his lips shut until they whiten with pressure, arms stiff to either side underneath the coverlet. There’s the suggestion of fists. Will is a cornered creature, with awareness to one side and tiredness on the other, and neither safe.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Hannibal takes in the smell of his fear, and the glossiness of tears in the corners of each eye. It has been a bad dream then. “Feeling alright, Will?” he asks in the muted light of the room.  </p>
<p> </p>
<p>The boy resolutely continues to lie, board straight, hands contracting. He glances at Hannibal, but says nothing.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Have you brought something with you, Will?” Hannibal asks, gently setting his reading aside on the small table. He’s surprised to feel the sharp cut of excitement - he had thought to be impartial, prepared for this to all be a farce. In the grey blank space of the room, it feels more solid now. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>He stands, aligning shirt cuffs with sweater, little bony glints of ivory shining out from his silver cufflinks and the black expanse of his clothed wrists. He approaches slowly, broadcasting each step. When he gets to the white expanse of linens, he presses carefully on Will’s shoulders, firm. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Will shakes his head, lips still pinched shut. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>(<em> In his mouth, under his tongue. </em>)</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Spit it out,” Hannibal whispers patiently, hand coming to rest beneath the boy’s chin. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Will favors him with a glance, something needful, but licks his lower lip, pushing something forward. Hannibal expects vomit. He gets just that, but very different also. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Into Hannibal’s hand falls multiple mouthfuls of watery broth, vegetables, and shreds of pinkish-white flesh. A bowl full. A pot full. More than an 18 year old could eat in a day. Will is miserable with heaving it all. Amongst it also, the small white bones of children's incisors. The broth falls quickly out, trickling across the bedsheets, but the teeth and the meat, they stay trapped in the palm lines of his hand and in the wet folds of Will's sleep shirt, smelling of baking spices, orange peel, and stomach bile.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>(<em> You almost drop them, like they sting - had they been in a wood bowl, like you remember, like it happened, you would have snapped your hand forward and killed the boy entirely for the presumptions - </em> <b> <em>for the surprise</em> </b> <em> . </em>)</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Hannibal stares, meticulously blank faced. "Explain."</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Will splutters, choking around the stock and a face priming itself for shame. He's slow to start. The ruddy splotches and tears are very fetching next to the wetness of his eyelashes. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>“They were eating the gingerbread,” he says hoarsely, fists still tight. With spoon and knife, Hannibal imagines. “I just watched. I don't...really like it. I didn’t know where they went when I checked inside,” he coughs, “...I thought around the house, maybe into the woods. People drift in and out like that sometimes. They don’t usually matter." Will coughs again. "I was hungry. She told me there was soup.” </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Ah.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Hansel and Gretel. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>(‘<em> Early in the morning before the children were awake, she was already up, and when she saw both of them sleeping and looking so pretty, with their plump and rosy cheeks, she muttered to herself, that will be a dainty mouthful.’ </em>)</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Hannibal smiles, and this one is wide and proud. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Will, however, is avoidant, very nearly panicked seeing Hannibal holding the teeth, favoring the soup’s meat in a broad hand where it hasn't yet fallen to the floor. It’s a strange thing, muscle fiber, more like cords strung together. Hannibal is very familiar with it - he could take a taste now and know it for what it is. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>“You've had quite the meal, Will,” he says, and it sings through his marrow, the truth of that, that it would be <em> this </em> of all things he brings back. He turns to where Will looks away, flesh twisted between index and middle finger. There’s nothing like communion to convey faith, and he is finding he has every faith in Will.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He takes a bite. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>---</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“You don’t really believe this stuff, do you?” asks Will. Hannibal thinks he looks very withdrawn and pale in the mid-light of the courtyard, apologetic. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Hannibal inclines his head. “I find that observation does a lot to clear the air on things like this,” he says “Far be it for me to call you a liar, or Doctor Bloom, though you’ll have to forgive me. It’s not every day that I’m told boys can spin gold from straw.” </p>
<p> </p>
<p>And with that, Hannibal brushes nothing from his trousers and stands. Will retreats into the safety of his glasses and oversized sweatshirt, and further still into the index of Hannibal’s book, obedient to a fault.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>---</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <b> <em>Short Form: Friday Morning - September 13th</em> </b>
</p>
<p><b> <em>Subject: </em> </b> <em> REM-Bough - Eikthyrnir - 18 </em></p>
<p><b> <em>STAFF:</em> </b> <em> H. Lecter, Interim Primary </em></p>
<p> </p>
<p><b> <em>Recovery: </em> </b> <em> Country stew - contents include </em> <span class="u"><em> potatoes </em></span> <em> , </em> <span class="u"><em> carrots </em></span> <em> , </em> <span class="u"><em> cabbage </em></span> <em> , and what appears to be </em> <em><span class="u">chicken fibers</span>. Approximate amount - 3600 to 4000ml, but dispersed.   </em></p>
<p><b> <em>Staff Notes:</em> </b> <em> Woke abruptly to vomit. Serving size well beyond a healthy amount and continued vomiting for 5 to 10 seconds after waking. Accurate measurement not possible with absorption from linens.   </em></p>
<p> </p>
<p><b> <em>Activity Notes:</em> </b> <em> Initial waking at 3:46 am from a presumed nightmare. Will hesitated to describe the dream, but lowered food intake at prior check-in suggests going to bed hungry and getting results as such. Some prolonged somnolence after calming down. Returned to a restless sleep around 5:12 am. No further recoveries at 7:06 am.  </em></p>
<p> </p>
<p><b> <em>Vitals at Waking:</em> </b> </p>
<p><b> <em>BP: </em> </b> <em> 130/95 </em></p>
<p><b> <em>Heart:</em> </b> <em> 114 BPM  </em></p>
<p><b> <em>Oxygenation:</em> </b> <em> 94% - Some hyperventilating and gagging.  </em></p>
<p><b> <em>Temp: </em> </b> <em> 101.2 </em></p>
<p> </p>
<p><b> <em>Additional Notes:</em> </b> <em> I would recommend a more regimented meal intake at earlier hours. One hates to think that of all the objects in the known universe that he could bring back, Will finds it necessary to make his own food. -H. Lecter </em></p>
<p> </p>
<p>N.B. eminentia<em> - ask after subject name and early manifestations. I am curious about the origins of them. </em></p>
<p> </p>
<p>---</p>
<p> </p>
<p>"I would like to formally accept the position, Director." The phone is hot in his hand and against his cheek, almost fevered. It feels like a sun-warmed stone. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>"That was quick.” Her voice is tinny over the line, from some great distance. “I had thought you'd need a more interesting hook than a mess of cottage stew. Maybe some brow beating from your colleague, or additional vacation days." </p>
<p> </p>
<p>He smiles into the glass, and the dark array of numbers beneath it. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>"Not at all, Kade,” he smiles. “I assure you, it was <em> very </em> interesting. But I do have some concessions to request." </p>
<p> </p>
<p>---</p>
<p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p>
<p>In the aftermath, Will tries to leave the bed with shaking breaths, striped pajama top appearing from beneath the sheets and riotous in the bland grey of the room. Hannibal helps him up, removes the monitoring devices from his hands and wrists, and grabs him by the shoulders to meet his eyes, now so obvious and green with sickness. Will stares forward, looking very young, and so tired.  </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Hannibal’s fingers find the point of the boy’s chin, and the delicate whiteness of his neck beneath the bone. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>“You’ve done nothing wrong,” he says, calm and soothing the tension from bony, teenage shoulders. “You simply read something at my request, and had a dark, childish thought that chased you long after the book closed, same as any other person putting their head to a pillow.” </p>
<p> </p>
<p>The boy nods, slow, though there's a question in his face that hasn't found words. Hannibal uses the side of his palm to wipe the bile and the sleep from his youthful face. His eyelid drags under Hannibal's thumb. Will doesn’t protest, merely sighs. His breath smells like cloves and cabbage soup and the boiled skin of children. Hannibal’s uniquely qualified to identify it. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>He’s never seen anything like it. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>(<em> What else can I make real through the lens of your terrifying vision? you think. What else can be pressed into you and made flesh? </em>)</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. perch your webs on my hand</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Warnings: Now that's what I call gaslighting, volume one.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p> </p><p>“How was the first week, Will?” asks Doctor Bloom.</p><p> </p><p>It is Saturday morning, and Doctor Bloom is in charge for this last weekend, giving Will some time to “acclimate” by Doctor Lecter’s words. He’s read that before, how to ascend and descend in elevation to get used to less oxygen in the mountains. It keeps you from getting sick. The intent in this context is some temporary separation to let him process. The translation in this context is he needs to grow used to the pointed tool that Doctor Bloom and Director Purnell have found to scrape him raw with. </p><p> </p><p>(<em> “Enjoy your holiday, kids! Don’t forget to tell your parents to fill out the permission slip for next Friday's trip!” says Miss Cameron, and Will puts his head down to walk to the corner where the neighbor will pick him up to take to his grandmother. </em>) </p><p> </p><p>Will rolls a shoulder, watching the fish in the west pond, the one he likes best. This one has the white goldfish with red speckles on her head in a scattered veil. She has been present since the first time he’s brought to the center courtyard, and he names her Anne, like she’s Anne of Green Gables. (<em> “Dear old world', she murmurs from the pages of the book, and you look on, thinking of blooming apple trees, 'you are very lovely, and I am glad to be alive in you.” </em>) Little disturbs her, and that gives him something to count on each day. </p><p> </p><p>“I think he’s putting me through my paces,” says Will, picking at a thread at the cuff of his sweatshirt. He’d say it’s his favorite, but they’ve gotten him at least five identical ones, and they throw away anything that he’s managed to mark or fray. It would serve them right if he brought them back a hundred more, unremarkable and unidentifiable to the ones that sit on the shelf of the closet. “I think I cantered," he frowns. "I’m not sure yet what counts as a gallop.” </p><p> </p><p>Doctor Bloom pinches her red lips together. It looks like a raspberry. </p><p> </p><p>---</p><p> </p><p>Will sees the gingerbread walls of the house, glazed and candied and smelling of a seasoned orange, he knows not to touch it. The more colorful the mushroom, the more poisonous the plant, or something like that. He’d like to think he knows what story he’s experiencing as he dreams, but that rarely is the case - the animal stupidity of unconsciousness takes over. It’s only morning that brings clarity. </p><p> </p><p>To either side of him, Zachary Conner and Ashley Steigman of his First Grade class move happily at the edges, licking sugar windows, stepping over sugared violets and dark, dark berries on the vine. Their tongues and teeth are red and orange with spice and cherry glaze. </p><p> </p><p><em> You shouldn’t </em>, he thinks, but he so rarely says anything in dreams that he doesn’t think to make sure that they’ve heard. He just wanders to the smoky door, admires the sturdiness of the peanut brittle floor and ribbon candy walls, and the twisting mapless halls, and does his best to be a polite guest. He does so well, and the hungry skinny boy that he is, he’s invited to dinner. He doesn’t ask what’s on the menu - it wouldn’t do to criticize the host, and there’s nothing he has to offer, so he says his “yes ma’ams” and “thank you muchly” and cleans his bowl because that’s what he’s been taught is polite. The witch, because surely that’s what she is, pokes him with the sharpness of bone, and tells him he has a while yet before he’ll be ready. </p><p> </p><p>(<em> You agree. It doesn’t matter what for. </em>)</p><p> </p><p>Bowl after bowl after bowl, and he’s not sure when he’s allowed to stop eating. Wrought spoon clicking against his teeth, tasting of metal. A bit of Ashley’s gummy throat is stuck in his teeth when he wakes. He knows it’s hers, because she sang in choir, and surely that makes for firmer windpipe, held stone-still with music. </p><p> </p><p>He vomits profusely into the hand beneath his head when consciousness rips into him, and wants so badly to say <em> sorry, sorry </em>, as though Ashley’s voice is trapped in the meat, and will tell what he’s done. </p><p> </p><p>“You’ve done nothing wrong,” says Doctor Lecter, hands like smoking brands at his cheek and shoulder, and he thinks that it should leave a mark. </p><p> </p><p>It’s not true, but he’s so tired of retching up schoolmate after schoolmate that he just nods. He savors the scratching of salt at the swollen corners of his eyes - he hopes the good Doctor pushes them out when his eyelids are pulled aside at the surprising force of the man’s thumbs. </p><p> </p><p>Chicken, the good Doctor calls it when the others ask, but Will's just grateful to not have to explain how he even fell on that flavor. He says it so competently, with such conviction, that even if Will were to tell the truth, he’s not sure he’d be taken at face value.</p><p> </p><p>“I won’t tell if you don’t,” Doctor Lecter winks, and Will shudders at the herbs behind his tongue and his tonsils, and falls into the kind of rest of those tired, but sick. When he wakes a second time, he’s offered a little cup of mouthwash (<em> “For the taste.” </em>) and a cup of decaf coffee, decaf because no one will take the risk of him not being able to sleep a night through. </p><p> </p><p>Will’s not sure he likes this man, who thinks everything is some kind of joke. He’s a liar at least once over - but at least a tolerant one.</p><p> </p><p>(<em> You think he licks his thumb once, before you fall asleep again that first time. Force of habit, someone accustomed to turning pages with a finger. Papillae scratching like a cat’s does, or maybe smooth like a snake’s, where words can’t get stuck on it’s shiny surface. </em>) </p><p> </p><p>---</p><p> </p><p>It takes a week for Doctor Lecter to replace Doctor Bloom. This is explained as being very expedient, so great, how lucky the team is to find someone so quickly. Will nods his head, and swallows back the taste of ginger, and fat, and the iron spoon.  </p><p> </p><p>“He’s just got a few things to wrap up,” says Doctor Bloom, smiling and walking through the hall with him after lunch. Club sandwich, no bacon. Side of french fries, glass of iced tea with lemonade, like Nana liked. “He was my mentor - very popular in my field of study, and very popular with the universities and his clients. I’m sure he’ll be upsetting a lot of schedules to make the change.”</p><p> </p><p>Will considers the floors, and the march of tan and beige battenburg squares, passing lab after lab. His soft shoes squeak on the stone of them. “A full practice he said,” he says with a frown. “Sure he’ll be happy with just me?”</p><p> </p><p>“Why do you think Doctor Lecter wouldn’t be?” she asks, and Will sees the edge of the labcoat again, like a tablecloth defending the valuable wood grain beneath. (<em> You have a habit of spilling everywhere. </em> )<br/> </p><p>“You weren’t,” he says, and there’s little said after that.</p><p> </p><p>It’s all anyone seems to talk about, in a limited scope of topics that Will already experiences. “You’ll want to ask Doctor Lecter how to handle the education schedule.” “Doctor Lecter should be the one that decides your reading for October and November.” “I’ve been told to stop the pasta train - something about it not being very healthy for a growing boy, and Doctor Lecter’s kind of the boss now, yeah?”</p><p> </p><p>Doctor Lecter, Doctor Lecter, Doctor Lecter. </p><p> </p><p>Will secretly hopes he doesn’t come back. That he asks for a week to wrap things up the same way that Daddy used to say he just needed a few more days to come up with the money for bills and groceries, and Nana just sighed. There was never any money, and so Will can only hope, there’s no things to actually wrap up. </p><p> </p><p>---</p><p> </p><p>The first day of Doctor Lecter’s tenancy starts abruptly with a frank conversation after what amounted to absolute silence the week before. </p><p> </p><p>Will, still properly waking with a handful of skipping stones, turns his head to the door to see the low glow of the wall lamps, and Doctor Lecter leaning forward in the usual brown chair. His leather shoes are a high shine oxblood red against the bland polished concrete, and look like little pools of motor oil.</p><p> </p><p>“Good morning, Will,” he greets with a smile, like the last time Will saw him wasn’t when he was firmly wiping broth from his chin and lips like he’d like nothing more than to dig a nail in and peel them back. It had been striking, being held like that, no gloves between. It’s disorienting, the juxtaposition of then and now, him so far away in Doctor Bloom’s chair. “I’d like to begin this morning with the first of a few ground rules. Would you like to do that now, or would you like to show me what’s in your hand?”</p><p> </p><p>Will blinks, once, twice, and almost rolls to cover himself up and try to start the day over again, but the other man is unmoving and unmoved, and he’s curious himself what stones he’s managed to bring back. He raises his right hand, lets his palm cradle the soft rasping texture of the rock between it.</p><p> </p><p>(<em> It’s a postcard, really, that sets you off. Something brought back in a handful from the mailbox years ago, with a cheery ‘ </em> <b> <em>Greetings from Glen Canyon Dam!</em> </b> <em> ’ across the front and the shiny expanse of a lake with red walled canyons rising at its sides. Some distant cousin, relation twice removed, doing the rounds without having to actually come by, sending their love with bubbles for the dots of their ‘i’s. “Nice of them to think of us.” The iron red of the rising walls around the water make for a nice escape - the skipping stones are just to pass the time. </em>)</p><p> </p><p>“Just out on the lake,” says Will. </p><p> </p><p>If Doctor Lecter wants more than that in the moment, he doesn’t show it. He just leans forward, pushing himself up at the knees, and walks to cross the room and eye the rocks in Will’s hand, admiring the red and cream-white of the striped sandstone. There are two stones - he had already thrown one before waking that sank into the frigid water, and best two out of three is how you play rock-paper-scissors, so why not when you just play rock?</p><p> </p><p>“They call it ‘making frogs’ where I’m from,” says Doctor Lecter, grabbing one to turn in his hand. “A lot of rain, a lot of lakes, ergo a lot of frogs. The impact of the stone on water looks like the rings of a frog’s jump. A pastime for slow afternoons. Need to fill some hours, Will?”</p><p> </p><p>He looks Will in the face, smiling. He does that a lot, Will thinks, and he can’t really tell if he’s honestly happy or making fun of him. </p><p> </p><p>“Our first ground rule,” he explains, “is that we will discuss your dreams in detail, with or without something being returned. Doctor Bloom has allowed your reporting to be voluntary - for me, it will be compulsory.” He turns the stone in his hand again. “Your synopsis this morning is likely accurate, but hardly the whole story, is it?”</p><p> </p><p>(<em> No. Yes. Why does he need to know? </em>)</p><p> </p><p>“How do you know I won’t just lie?” asks Will, still raspy from sleep. His leg glides under the sheets to stretch, counting toe by toe. “I don’t even remember sometimes - just small stuff like colors, scenes.”</p><p> </p><p>Will watches as he pulls a small black notebook from the pocket of his waistcoat, and makes a note. When he sits up, Doctor Lecter snaps it closed, held still by pinched fingers.</p><p> </p><p>The other stone is taken, and both of them disappear into a loose fist and to the front pocket of his grey slacks. “And I want to hear all of it for now, the lies too if you feel it necessary,” he says. “Can’t make a very good inventory without knowing what’s in the cabinets, now can we? I’m not one to allow anything to go to waste.”  </p><p> </p><p>He encourages Will out of bed, and to dress for the day, and yes, the usual will do for now, like Will has something other than a comfortable pile of sweatshirts and cotton boxer shorts and athletic pants to pick from. Will sneers at the shine of his shoes, at the stripes in the stones, and resolves to have woken on the wrong side of the bed. He has breakfast with Alana, and doesn’t find out until the end of the day why that’s necessary.</p><p>     </p><p>---</p><p> </p><p>There are seven tech staff members that work directly with Will. Some new, some old, all very careful about what they say about themselves.</p><p> </p><p>“Sorry kiddo, personal details are a no-go outside of Doctor Bloom,” says Jimmy, and because it’s Jimmy, Will forgives it. “But if it’s any comfort, my life is exceedingly boring, even in duplicate with a twin. It’s all reruns of Law and Order and Chinese take-out from here.”</p><p> </p><p>Doctor Sutcliffe famously refers to them as the Seven Dwarves, but Will thinks they’re more interesting than that, and something about being compared to Snow White just rubs him the wrong way. Each has something about them that makes them unique from each other, but each also has one of Will’s seven dogs, and that distinguishes them from the otherwise faceless and silent lab staff and administration.</p><p> </p><p>(<em> They take them from you, but they’re still your dogs - the way they greet you is all you need as proof. </em>)   </p><p> </p><p>Jimmy is the oldest and the first that Will meets. He can still taste the pancakes in the styrofoam carryout container brought to him from their first acquaintance, despite the sulfur still percolating in Will’s nose. He talks about old movies a lot. He works six days a week, and does most of the morning intakes. “Not afraid of spiders, snakes, scary great aunts, and anything else that kids find frightening,” he explains, though he flinched away from a spill of molten steel once, where it burned the floor and took the leg of the bed clear off in a rush of blinding gold and fire. He has Winston, the most recent of the dogs, and the longest holdout on the <em> Will Graham Dream Center for Pet Adoption </em>, as it has come to be called amongst the faculty. </p><p> </p><p>Brian is technically as old as Jimmy as far as Will’s experience with them extends, but he knows Jimmy better, and it only feels appropriate to make him second, like a younger sibling to the other. Will doesn’t have younger siblings, but he imagines that’s what it’s like - poking at each other, disagreeing for the sake of it, common goals even if you’re different people made of the same stuff. Brian likes orange blossom conditioner, burgers with fries, and the occasional after work drink. Brian doesn’t particularly understand Will, but he’s undoubtedly the most well-adjusted of everyone that he talks to, and that makes Will look at him as a meter of normalcy in all this strangeness. Ellie, the curly-haired spaniel mix with a demure disposition takes a liking to him, and Brian, very kind when push comes to shove, offers her a couch to live on. “Chicks like guys with dogs,” says Brian, and Will wouldn’t know anything about that.</p><p> </p><p>Beverly is one of the three girls who work with him - she’s Will’s favorite. Beverly works nights, and has a flippant joke for every weird thing that comes back. She doesn’t let it get weird, even though the whole thing is undeniably so. She brings him green chile burritos for lunch (<em> with reluctant occasional permission </em> ), and plays board games, and calls him ‘scout’, like that’s a normal thing. ( <em> “My parents said that all the time,” she laughs. “I guess it just kind of stuck.” </em>) She has Buster, the Jack Russell Terrier with a bad temper and an overbite that Will pulls from a fox hole when he’s 10, admiring his wagging tail and wild eyes. Will sees Buster the most - he doesn’t really have the words to thank Beverly for that, only the stillness to sit in a recliner with the dog in his lap, and pull at the soft fur between jealous fingers. </p><p> </p><p>The second of the girls is Margot. Margot pulls quarters from behind his ears, quotes Jane Austen and Madonna that he recognizes from the radio before he came here, and calls him handsome. (<em> Not to her taste though - your first concept of homosexuality comes through her, a consummate lover of women, and she almost loses her job for it. </em> ) Margot is enamored with Jack, a German Shepherd mix that exclusively likes the ladies on the team, and unfailingly snarls at the male doctors. ( <em> “My hero!” she coos, and Jack, a sweet boy, wags his tail furiously against the cold tile. </em>)   </p><p> </p><p>The last of the women and the newest on the team, Molly, smiles big and is the first to play softball with him in the wide emptiness of the facility gym - she says he’s got a good eye for things, that he would have been a good athlete. (<em> “Just gotta work on those team skills,” she says with a wink between blood draws, MRIs, mid-afternoon naps. </em>) Will’s first crush will always belong to her, though he’s grown out of it, and a little embarrassed by it these days when it gets brought up. She keeps Max, a Bernese mix, who is happiest with her younger son who Will has never met. He knows in his heart he made Max for them, and not for him, and that the childish love he offered is now tied in black hairs, big paws, a panting smile; exorcised from him and content to chase tennis balls on Thursdays.    </p><p> </p><p>Matt is night crew too, though Beverly doesn’t get along with him - Will doesn’t know how he fits into their regimented life in the building, doesn’t have a clear idea of if he’s here because he just needs a job, or if there’s something about Will that keeps him coming back to work. Will talks about animals with him, the ones he’s permitted to talk about, because there’s a particular animal keenness to his narrow face. Harley, a kidney-red pit bull mix with a smile that stands her ground and steals from the countertops, goes home with him, and Will doesn’t worry, because Matt likes animals, even if Will’s not convinced he likes most people. </p><p> </p><p>The last is Francis, who is quiet, and kind, and only around occasionally. They talk of English literature in quiet voices on weekends, the heritage of Tess of d’Urbervilles, of Jude’s dedication to his deflowered love. (<em> They hesitate to let you know of anything but sequestered thoughtful youths in the countryside, like that normalizes your life </em>.) Will never is allowed to meet them, but whisperings in the hall say there’s a couple others like him but not like him in the south wing of the building, and it is here that Francis spends the bulk of his time. Another team, another grey dim room of sleeping monsters. Will thinks the dog he is gifted is kin - Zoe with the underbite, twin to his cleft palate, and Francis is nothing but careful with her.   </p><p> </p><p>Doctor Lecter interviews everyone on his first day, but not with Will. “It’s good to get an honest perspective,” he explains when asked about it. </p><p> </p><p>He then summarily rearranges the tech schedule like it hasn’t been the same since he was fourteen years old and Molly was brought on. He’s only informed after dinner when Doctor Lecter is leaving for the night, and there’s no Beverly to talk to. </p><p> </p><p>(<em> He was supposed to be here for </em> <b> <em>you</em> </b> <em> . That’s what Doctor Bloom said, so why are you still staring at the horrific white expanse of her lab coat, partitioning herself off like a white picket fence between neighboring yards on a Monday morning, sloughing through apple cinnamon oatmeal with no sugar, talking about complex transitive verbs? Why are you looking at chemistry notes about international trade in Scandium when you’re supposed to be making friends with your new full-time babysitter? </em>) </p><p> </p><p>Will, feeling angry and guilty for ever wishing for things to change, brings back stacks of empty file folders on Tuesday, so many that Jimmy struggles to get around them and move them off Will’s chest. It takes him an hour to count all of them, even with Will doing his best to not get out of bed. He had been in the school office, pulling drawers and drawers of cabinets open, looking for something, but all of the trays are empty of anything but the mellow beige of hanging dividers. He’s not sure what’s missing, only that it is, and he’ll be caught if he doesn’t rush and pull them all out.</p><p> </p><p>Doctor Lecter, not present when Will initially wakes, just smiles when he comes in Tuesday morning, Jimmy still sorting and counting with a determined kind of humor, and writes something to himself again.</p><p> </p><p>“Busy night, Will?” he asks. </p><p> </p><p>---</p><p> </p><p>Doctor Lecter ends up imposing two new rules for the morning routine. </p><p> </p><p>They are not mean ones, not the way that the rules Doctor Chilton imposed were back when he was a kid, or strange and open ended like Doctor Bloom’s, which were easy to shrug off as what Will has come to think of as <em> typical shrink shit </em>, per a comment made by Doctor Sutcliffe in a group meeting when he is 14 and cannot surmount a month-long battle with panic attacks following a particularly bad nightmare.</p><p> </p><p>(<em>There was something in your veins, and what if it came with you? What if the blue network of capillaries and vessels snaking in your arms just beneath the whiteness of skin is full of it, and no one knows because you didn’t carry it screaming in your hands from your mind? </em><b><em>What if</em></b><em>?</em> <em>You’ve never considered if you can carry things </em>inside <em>you</em>. <em>You don’t know what to tell any of them at the time - not Doctor Bloom who’s still wet behind the ears and sorry to see you tear at yourself, not Doctor Chilton who is inconvenienced and utterly convinced he can do better, or Doctor Sutcliffe who prescribes sleep aids with a casual irregard until everyone realizes you don’t dream under the influence of drugs, and what’s a little suffering in the face of science anyway?</em>) </p><p> </p><p>The changes are practical, somewhat disarming, and something that Will inherently chafes at. He is not punished for saying no to them, allegedly mandatory or not, but he feels such a keen sense of shame when looking at Doctor Lecter’s easy smile in his sharp face that he often finds himself complying regardless.</p><p> </p><p>The first order of business is of course to discuss his sleep, and for the first week the Doctor holds firm on this. He asks each day regardless of Will’s reluctance, teenaged irritability, or drowsiness. In the few mornings he is not directly in Will’s room when Will wakes, it is asked over breakfast, same tone, same phrase. He doesn’t allow Will to hide behind his glasses, staring straightforward at him with his ruddy brown-red-gold eyes.  </p><p> </p><p>“Good morning, Will. Where did you go last night?”</p><p> </p><p>(<em> Nowhere, you clown, you think uncharitably, eyeing the blue and gold florets of his tie. I don’t go fucking anywhere, and if I did, I’d never come back. </em>) </p><p> </p><p>(<em> You would. Where else would you go? </em>)</p><p> </p><p>The second order of business is that he should journal his thoughts - this isn’t for anyone but himself, and he is promised a modicum of privacy with it. It’s not the first time it’s suggested to him, but definitely the first time someone’s promised to not look at it, and that’s a tempting thing, something to hide under the mattress, to write all the ugly and sad thoughts he has asleep without it pouring out of him in an uglier way. “It’ll help you better process how your dreams progress and understand your ability. How can you master dreaming if you don’t know how you stumbled onto the contents of them?” asks Doctor Lecter. </p><p> </p><p>The journal, something about the size of a greeting card, and leather bound by sea-blue, looks innocuous in his (<em> veined, burning hot, pulling at your eyes </em>) hand.  </p><p> </p><p>Will takes it and an already sharpened #2 pencil.</p><p> </p><p><b> <em>September 24th</em> </b> , he writes. <b> <em>Dreamt of mind being in total chaos. Obvious answer - life in total chaos. How’s that for prime analysis? Do I get my own full practice with patients now?</em> </b></p><p> </p><p>When Will goes to facetiously have Doctor Lecter check his work, (<em> “Is this what you had in mind?” </em>) he’s waved off with a laugh. Doctor Lecter doesn’t look at all, though his dry smile suggests he saw something of it. </p><p> </p><p>“It’s for you, Will,” he explains. “You don’t need to tell me any more or less than what we discuss when you wake up.”  </p><p> </p><p>He also feels suspicion, watching Doctor Lecter’s own little notebook come out, hiss open, slap shut. Personal notes, Will guesses, that don’t make their way to the tablets and computers of the institution. Him not revealing any more or less than what they discuss when Will wakes up. Fair, Will sighs to himself, but still finds his mind turning it like the skipping stones, looking for strata. What is he writing? What kind of observations does he think he’s made when Will is being contrary? What will it mean for him if he’s reporting it somewhere?</p><p> </p><p>Will doesn’t explain the file folders when pressed. </p><p> </p><p>“We’ll try again tomorrow,” is the pleasant reply, and there it is again, that shame.</p><p> </p><p>---</p><p> </p><p>The second major change that is made to Will’s routine beyond reorganizing the techs, and that Will finds disturbing, is that he no longer is given the pre-approved list of dinners that he has eaten for a decade. Grilled cheeses, basic pasta, Salisbury steaks. Things to be served with ketchup. Cafeteria food, just like everyone else, that he eats with the techs, that Beverly looks at with vague disgust, and Brian eats with a single-minded purpose. </p><p> </p><p>Doctor Lecter insists on not only designing recipes for him, but preparing the new variety of meals in house himself when he can manage it. Director Purnell allows it, on the condition that everything of its contents is documented, from the scarcest grams of coriander to the origin of the proteins. She also will not improve the break room kitchen - it’s not like the majority of the staff uses anything but the microwave, and the cafeteria kitchen is strictly for cafeteria staff, and “<em> we’re all about practicality here, Doctor Lecter </em>”. </p><p> </p><p>“Kade, you wound me,” Doctor Lecter says on Wednesday morning, dealing out almond croissants and orange-peel perfumed earl grey tea with the kind of casual disregard that comes from routine. “Only the safest ingredients, of course, and far be it for me to say that the terroir of something isn’t important. I like to have company for meals, and Will is hardly going to have a bright imagination with such a dull pattern of cuisine.” </p><p> </p><p>The new pattern continues that afternoon, prepping for dinner. </p><p> </p><p>“You are much too young to be resigned to eating the same things day in and day out,” says the Doctor, rocking a santoku knife with a casual regard against a cutting board in the disavowed  kitchen that inhabits the fourth floor break room. Will hasn’t been in here before, but it feels like a waiting room with its giant wall art of peace lilies, and an ugly mauve-colored couch beneath it. Off-white cabinets, a large sink, and the yellowed wreckage of a microwave take up the majority of the wall, though a small electric stovetop and refrigerator take it from largely useless to at least workable. It was likely new when Will arrived. “You are hardly going to be inclined to vivid dreams in the absence of vivid experiences.” </p><p> </p><p>(<em> And until you bring something back of use, the muteness of this room will be your punishment. </em>)</p><p> </p><p>“I think that has more to do with the surroundings, and less to do with the creativity of the chicken,” Will mutters into the sleeve of a hoodie. </p><p> </p><p>Doctor (<em> Hannibal, he asks you again to call him </em>) Lecter just smiles, and stirs his chopped searing onion and leek in olive oil and garlic over heat. The skillet is new - something from home maybe, or bought to keep here. “Something easy tonight - a quiche. You have a delicate stomach, and we’ll have to work up to more challenging things.” </p><p> </p><p>“Eggs are hardly new to me,” says Will, turning a glass baking dish on the break room table, where Doctor Lecter already has a pastry crust cooling, golden brown and methodically punctured by a criss-cross of fork tine points. </p><p> </p><p>Doctor Lecter (<em> Hannibal </em>) gives him an sly glance. “Something poured from a carton?”</p><p> </p><p>Will thinks of Saturday breakfasts, orange juice, cream of wheat with fried eggs on the side. Daddy’s watching the 8 am news, and the morning fog from the Gulf still heavy like it’s dreaming of being rain. He’ll go outside to watch the dew gather and burn off the blades of the day lily fronds, stitch spider webs made into jeweled nets between them and their weaver nestled into the center like a cabochon. But for now it smells of coffee, and it’s warm on the couch, and-</p><p> </p><p>“I wasn’t always a ward of the state,” he replies with a blink, chasing the thought away. </p><p> </p><p>At this, the Doctor nods, less sly but certainly thoughtful, considering Will’s wide-eyed absence. “Yes, Alana mentioned your father and grandmother, from before you were brought here,” he says, removing the skillet from the heat, and cracking white egg after white egg into the vegetables, yolks shining under the overhead incandescents. Gruyere and cheddar cheese follows. “I apologize, Will,” he adds. “That was ill done of me. It’s unkind of me to erase that part of your history.” </p><p> </p><p>Will just turns the baking dish again, nodding. He tries not to think what Alana would have told him about his grandmother. Just the bad parts probably. That's all that anyone but him really knows of her anyway. He tries not to think what his dad thinks about these days.  </p><p> </p><p>Doctor Lecter watches him for a moment, though his hands never cease their preparations, beating the yolks and filling until it is the attractive creamy pale yellow of evening clouds. </p><p> </p><p>“Let’s consider an egg you wouldn’t be familiar with,” he says, turning to the table and Will, industriously logging the seconds with quarter turns of the dish. He favors Will with a glance, and Will, sighing, let’s go of the dish and leans back into one of the uncomfortable dinette chairs. “I saw that you are something of a fan of sea birds - one of your rare few possessions is a feather.” </p><p> </p><p>Will snorts. “If by fan, you mean it’s one of the few I’ve seen them in person and they make me homesick, then yes, I’m a fan.”  </p><p> </p><p>Hannibal whisks the mixture into the pastry, ignoring Will’s hostility. It almost offends him how easily it rolls off the Doctor. “Have you heard of eating seagull eggs?” </p><p> </p><p>“Sounds like a rarified way to eat eggs that could have been done with a chicken egg.”</p><p> </p><p>“Ah yes, but what if I were to tell you the taste is substantially different, and desired to such an extent that the black-headed gull’s eggs can only be sold by generational gatherers, rarified to such an extent that people rob their nests blind?” </p><p> </p><p>Will frowns. “Seems kind of cruel.”</p><p> </p><p>Hannibal nods, <em>yes yes, just so</em>. “The gatherers take one egg per nest, and mark the others with an ‘x’, so that the next person to come through can see which nests are to be left alone and which of them have new eggs. They will stand guard during the nesting season to chase off all the other predators - foxes, poachers, larger birds that come calling to the marshes and estuaries. It’s a duty of theirs, to make sure that the gulls return and thrive, their little speckled pale green eggs safe to hatch year after year.” </p><p> </p><p>“Is it something you’re planning on adding to this exciting diet of yours?” Will gruffs, scuffing the floor with the rubber sole of his shoe. “I’m not sure if I like the moral implications of eating them.” </p><p> </p><p>Doctor Lecter smiles. “I’m never ashamed to eat anything, however it’s not something I’d expect to have this far west of the United Kingdom, considering the scarcity. I’m not much for scaling cliffs or roving through marshlands for ingredients, just the local farmers market.” He moves the baking dish from table to counter to stove, holding the cheap plastic dial timer as confidently as he does a pen or the monitoring sensors. “Something to aspire to in the future, when the implications are less distressing?”</p><p> </p><p>Will laughs a little. “Sure.”</p><p> </p><p>The quiche is delicious, unlike anything he’s had before. He wants to hate it on principal, but he’d rather be grating cheese and talking about birds than reviewing strategical drilling locations on the Alaskan coast anyway, and Doctor Lecter at least seems to understand that for the moment. Will considers he’s never seen a farmers market, but is too humiliated to admit it. </p><p> </p><p>---</p><p> </p><p>Will pulls the crane feather from his small box of belongings that night, and straightens the barbs with careful fingers. </p><p> </p><p>Brian is on shift, just outside the room running through paperwork, and idly texting between entries. Not having to account for dinner thanks to Doctor Lecter’s own careful notes before leaving around 7pm puts him in a good mood, even if he’s not a fan of his new schedule - he’s always hated taking measurements, especially with Will’s tendency to not eat everything. But it gives Will a moment to himself, and those have been hard to get this week in all of the excitement. </p><p> </p><p>It’s not in great shape these days, though the soft grey and dappled white of it still brings to mind the field trip, and the safety of high grass. Everyone recognizes it - an easy line item to add to the room’s contents at nightfall and sunrise. There’s no real magic to it other than the emotional value. He can still bring things back with or without it, but sometimes he keeps it in hand until he falls asleep.</p><p> </p><p>It’s settling to see it. Nobody’s poaching eggs in Mississippi for elegant dinners, nor do the park rangers need to watch their flocks armed to the teeth. He doesn’t know anything of black-headed gulls and their troubles so long as he’s in here, and that emotional distance helps. Trivia doesn’t go far without tangibility for something so specific. It’s a feature of him the institute has struggled to bridge the gap for in pictures.  </p><p> </p><p>Will doesn’t bring anything back on Thursday morning, only turns his head and considers the fully-suited image of his new Doctor, leaning over him to grab the crane feather for a closer look. </p><p> </p><p>“Good morning, Will,” he says, not at all disturbed by his sudden audience, audacious in his thievery, though Will’s eyes come to rest on the tortoiseshell buttons of his suit instead of his face. “Where did you go last night?”</p><p> </p><p>“Nowhere,” Will yawns, wiping at an eye, looking for his glasses. “Or if I did, I don’t know about it.” (<em> You didn’t. You feel better, rested. Safe. </em>) It happens every so often, maybe once a month. He tosses back the covers - still nothing, pleasantly blank. His feet look long and lonely in the field of white cotton sheets, poking out from the striped pants.  </p><p> </p><p>Doctor Lecter looks at the feather now with a blank consideration. Will has a moment that all he can see is him crushing it in hand, and has to bite his tongue against the desire to ask for it back. </p><p> </p><p>“We’ll try again tomorrow,” the Doctor says, no disappointment in his voice. </p><p> </p><p>It’ll be apple dumplings with salted butter and honey this morning. It too is delicious, but Will wants cream of wheat from a microwave, and to watch the fog on the lawn outside, and that takes something away from the soft dough and cinnamon poached cubes of fruit throughout. He eats it because that’s polite. </p><p> </p><p>(<em> You’re being particularly useless this week, you think, and hope it encourages him to go home and reconsider. No children to sick up this time, no living things, nothing at all for the educated and aesthete Doctor Hannibal Lecter to show his new superiors. Bring back Doctor Bloom, or bring back the doctor before her that named you something else. If this is to be where you’re stuck, let it at least be sticky with the routine you know. </em>) </p><p> </p><p>For lunch, a salad. Will rolls his eyes when Doctor Lecter pulls two shiny black sealed boxes from the refrigerator, going on and on about how he spends his evenings when he gets back to his home, that he had actually brought two different lunches, but was needing “<em> something lighter </em>” today after all, filling the quiet with noise. He’s very particular about Will sitting down before serving him, pulling the lacquered wood lid from the box with a bit more enthusiasm than the blandness of the breakroom really merits.</p><p> </p><p>In it, a small nest of boiled shelled quails eggs, bright and spotted against the darkness of red endive and sun dried tomatoes. Doctor Lecter cracks one of his own open with blunt fingers. The yolk is still very runny and soft, and drips vividly onto the leaves. </p><p> </p><p>This time he can’t quite force himself to eat. He takes a few halfhearted bites, watching the eggs roll and separate to clack against the bottom of the box before he apologizes. “I guess I’m still full from breakfast,” he says, and hides in the bathroom until his heart stops racing. He doesn’t want it in the midday notes. He doesn’t want to be seen like that, over something as stupid as a lunch salad.  </p><p> </p><p>---</p><p> </p><p>Friday morning, Will brings something back, the first thing since Tuesdays folders. He is lying on his side, arm curled to the pillow, with dozens and dozens of golf ball sized speckled pale emerald eggs, each with a big black ‘x’ on the side of them. </p><p> </p><p>He rushes around the edges of pebbled beaches and backwater pools in a drizzly dreaming fog, smelling of the ocean and the particular odor of salty wind in the gulf. He can’t see very far ahead of himself, but there’s a crushing anxiety in him as he looks between grasses and driftwood and rocks that he needs to collect as much as he can before someone comes behind him. </p><p> </p><p>Will’s father’s jacket is too big for him, even now at 18, but it has deep pockets - a jacket good for cigarettes and carrying wallets and a Swiss army knife that’s half rusted but convenient for the bottle opener and the nail clippers. It’s good now for eggs, seagulls watching him from the edges of the water, colors shifting as they bob in the tide but heads resolutely jet black. They don’t really attack him, just piteously call and mew to each other. He says he’s sorry. He’d leave them if he could.  </p><p> </p><p>When the pockets are full, he tries to carry more in his hands, but they start clacking against each other, and he’s afraid to pick up more. There's that dread again, just behind or in front of him, and he scrabbles for another nest's worth. He can feel the fluttering of tiny hearts in his fingers and<em> they’re falling, there goes one now to the ground, shit, </em> <b> <em>SHIT</em> </b> <em> - </em> </p><p> </p><p>He wakes with a gasp, fingers trembling around his clutch.</p><p> </p><p>Doctor Lecter is dressed in a brown plaid suit, hands carded and perched on his knee, same as it always is this week. His silk tie, held by a shiny little black pin, is the same color as the eggs. “Good morning, Will,” he says. “Where did you go last night?” </p><p> </p><p>Will doesn’t move an inch, arm tight with stress. He doesn’t want any of the eggs to roll to the floor, but Doctor Lecter plucks one up from the top of the pile between two fingers and a thumb, holding a penlight to the end to see the small developing gull inside. </p><p> </p><p>“Goodness, Will,” he drawls, face smooth but bright and satisfied. He tosses it up, and catches it while Will winces. “You shouldn’t take the ones marked to stay.”</p><p> </p><p>---</p><p> </p><p>“The team’s pretty pleased with everything this week,” says Doctor Bloom. “A few complaints about the schedule changes, and I’ll probably still cover a few weekends so Hannibal has some time to adjust too. He was worried yesterday was a bit too much for you.”</p><p> </p><p>(<em> Doctor Lecter, helping Jimmy count eggs while another lab technician sees about where to get an egg incubator, or if they should get one, and how do you care for over 40 newly hatched gulls anyway, and you are still clutching at some of the eggs that are yet unclaimed and uncounted that fall between your legs. All of them alive, all of them still only halfway done with their growth. New territory, like you’ve carried 40 plus children from the shore to the grey room, and Doctor Lecter, checking your pulse, holding your wrist such that the others can’t see your shaking hand. </em>) </p><p> </p><p>“Yeah, I guess he’s ok,” says Will.</p><p>
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<a name="section0004"><h2>4. close your eyes with vacuous dread</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Warnings: Hannibal can be nice. Validating that you exist can be awful. </p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p> </p><p>Sunday afternoon is peaceful, not because of the rituals of morning church, getting ready for the school week, or any other typical American household pastimes. Will doesn’t do those things anymore, because that requires a typical American household. Every day of the week is more or less the same, with only the spare few people he surrounds himself trading off in an endless parade of white halls and rooms. </p><p> </p><p>The courtyard is the only real exception to this, dreams notwithstanding. </p><p> </p><p>(<em>They’re not real - so they don’t count. They lack texture - they come from glossy photos and printed sheets of paper overlaid on your own memories. They have taste and appearance, but you don’t know what they’re actually made of. You get the candy imitation instead of the real deal, Willy Wonka style with a whole meal condensed into a single piece of gum. You don’t know how better to explain the difference to someone - it's one of the only movies you've seen.</em>) </p><p> </p><p>The seasons, not technically visible from the tall roofless opening, still change with time, and weather, and mood. If it’s a cloudy day, Will can look up and feel raindrops. If it’s a scorcher in July, he can burn the skin of his cheeks in the middle of the day from the rare peek of the sun from over the top of the building, and in the warped reflections off the tempered upstairs windows. (<em>You are scolded for this kind of self-flagellation, and get slathered with aloe cream like you’re a stupid child instead of a nearly grown teenager - you dream afterwards of hot stones that you jump from perch to perch from, chasing billows of beach sand but never any ocean</em>.) Days can be broken into bite-sized chunks that have different flavors in the time that Will would otherwise have filled with basic education and the occasional attempt at <em> suggested reading material </em>, the manila folders from Doctor Chilton, or Agent Crawford, or the nameless associates that bring Will restricted reports and photos. When the weekends open up and are free for recreation, Will takes his outside.  </p><p> </p><p>Alana has always respected this as his “me time”. Will guesses that’s what it probably is, though given the option, he’s not sure he wouldn’t choose something more ambitious. Doctor Lecter clearly intends to teach him some basics in the kitchen while imparting obscure trivia, but Will craves to stand and move around in foreign places, not eat their food. He imagines it sometimes - what it would be like to just disappear into another country in his sleep, and leave his body behind. He's had a brush with that not so long ago, and didn't care for the results.</p><p> </p><p>It sounds a lot like death, so he never stretches his mind to it a second time, regardless of the curiosity. </p><p> </p><p>Today, he finds a bench in the courtyard, where the reflection off the glass of the 8th, 9th, and 10th floors brings just enough late afternoon light to cast a mild glow on the pages of a book, a paperback copy of John Keats’ poetry, flaking at the corners from use. Francis brings it to him when his shift begins at 2 pm, earnest and tired and coming off a first shift in the south wing. “Something to bring the outside in,” he says, in his stilted manner. </p><p> </p><p>(<em>You like Francis for his lisp. He is different like you, but functional like you are presently not, which is all that you can aspire towards. The scar from his cleft palate is a divide from a time when he could not, to now when he can. You look to him for tangential inspiration, and he rewards you with his strange humanness underneath the dour split scowl.</em>)</p><p> </p><p>The fish are a gold and white flash glinting under the dark water, and the pages of the book rasp against his fingers. He holds the sensation close, and thinks on the dry leaves somewhere beyond, the kind that crunch underfoot. It is autumn - those are somewhere, right? While Will has the idea of oak leaves turning from green to red to gold outside the drywall, steel, and glass of the institution, he cannot see it. There is no earnest color in this place. It is all a facsimile of someone else’s experience, and he shapes his mind around them as best he can.</p><p> </p><p>He turns the book’s pages, a vanilla warm cream tone.</p><p> </p><p><em> He furleth close; contented so to look, </em> it reads, <em> on mists in idleness—to let fair things pass by unheeded as a threshold brook. </em></p><p>  </p><p>---</p><p> </p><p>Agent Jack Crawford, now head of Behavioral Sciences instead of Trafficking these days, takes it upon himself to introduce himself to Doctor Lecter on the Monday that everyone is back together again, carrying more folders with purpose. He's been stirred by the success with the rare birds. Will wishes no one would stir that nest at all. </p><p> </p><p>(<em>Everyone t</em><em>ogether, like it’s a family, and they’re not corralling you into the conference room again to discuss the next steps. How pleased they are with Doctor Lecter, instead of how pleased they are with you. He gets another weekend to himself coming up soon, and you get to live in anticipation of his return, his burning hands gently pulling your gifts away like you’ve stolen them.</em>) </p><p> </p><p>Doctor Bloom has been warding Agent Crawford off like bad weather for the past several weeks, but onboarding mandates that introductions take place, and Will sits next to Doctor Lecter with the kind of sudden dismay he imagines people experience before cars crash, or seconds before having a catastrophic stroke. He’s read it’s called impending sense of doom, which sounds like it ought to be silly melodrama, but instead has made it into a lexicon of actual ailments. Will wonders how many terrible things share it as a symptom. </p><p> </p><p>“I need your help again, Will.”</p><p> </p><p>At the very least, it’s a symptom of meetings with Jack Crawford.  </p><p> </p><p>Will sighs, and shuffles in his chair, reaching as deep into his hooded sweater’s pockets as he can to hide his hands. Flanked on either side by Doctor Lecter and Doctor Chilton, it’s difficult to not feel small. Their presence is supposed to be something like representation, <em> advocacy </em>. What he actually feels is escorted, as though pinned between two walls.</p><p> </p><p>Across the shiny blackness of the conference table, craggy-faced Jack Crawford is as solid as a mountain. He deals in dead bodies these days in addition to inexplicably ill-gotten wares, and he picks up every useful tool that he sees. Behavioral Sciences seems to be a little more loaded than just psychological applications to peacekeeping - he knows every aberration living in this building. He knows what buttons to press to make them useful.  </p><p> </p><p>“It’s the last case that you worked on with Doctor Bloom,” he supplies with a pointed look. “The missing girls - the one with no bodies, if you remember.” </p><p> </p><p>“I remember,” says Will, a little too sharply.</p><p> </p><p>Doctor Lecter to his right cards his hands over his own knee, pressing out a crease in the subtle pinstripe. The man’s head doesn’t turn, but Will can feel his regard on his hidden hands in his pocket, where Will has to remind himself not to twist the fingers there. It’s frustrating being so obvious. </p><p> </p><p>“Doctor Bloom had mentioned this in brief to me, Agent Crawford,” says Doctor Lecter, “but as I understand it, it was a wholly unproductive venture. Trying to manifest a clue from an absence of materials...well, perhaps Will here can overcome the physics of it, but the context is still missing, and the dreams become destructive without it.”</p><p> </p><p>Crawford smiles, the flat kind with teeth and no actual humor. “Then Doctor Bloom would have also told you that Will has been very useful in several cases prior to this one. One bad ride doesn’t mean the car doesn’t work.”</p><p> </p><p>Will bites his tongue, and flicks his eyes between Agent Crawford and Doctor Lecter. Doctor Lecter gives a twitching smile of his own, something there and gone in an instant. Will marvels at it, but also at the long sigh that follows. </p><p> </p><p>“Do you often refer to your subordinates as machines in front of them, or is that intended to be a reminder?” asks the Doctor, and Will, despite himself, is grateful for the jab. (<em>You yourself can’t hand them out so bluntly - nobody likes a working animal that’s shy of its collar around here. Doctor Bloom is firmly opposed but polite, excusing things like this, and the techs risk losing their job if they talk back, but Doctor Lecter, who can make you useful, who can make you find things, well he can apparently say what <strong>he</strong> wants.</em>) “The report I read indicated that the impact of your case was overtly negative on the project as a whole.”</p><p> </p><p>“Ha,” Doctor Chilton says, switching his own posture to match Doctor Lecter’s, but with nothing of the casual ease. “Negative, indeed. Negative doesn’t really cover the backtracking we’ve had to do, Crawford, to get back to something like normal.”</p><p> </p><p>Unsaid here, but known to Will - the impact is unhealthy, destabilizing, and unwanted. The impact is that Will loses track of himself in his sleep for a week - he fails to find anything of value, and he fails to find himself while he’s at it. When he is awake, he refocuses himself on small things that feel safe, small tokens like flowers, no matter what anyone tries to suggest or guide him to. The impact is that Doctor Bloom is no longer in charge, and a cleverer man has taken her place, because it turns out small tokens after a period of nothing at all is unacceptable.</p><p> </p><p>But here is Jack Crawford again, permission granted by Director Purnell, to bring the same sad story to him again, and hope for a different result. Will’s being taken for a hard drive, having sat too long covered and safe, whether he likes it or not unless Doctor Lecter puts a stop to it.</p><p> </p><p>“It was only three girls before, Will, but whoever is doing this is escalating,” says Agent Crawford, refocusing to Will. “I need you on this - I have something for you to work with this time. Just look over this <em> one </em>,” he adds, and it’s never just the one to look over.</p><p> </p><p>(<em>In fact it’s seven now - they’re all the same at heart. They’re all filled with nothing.</em>) </p><p> </p><p>“Just the one,” Will repeats.</p><p> </p><p>(<em>You will be again too.</em>)</p><p> </p><p>---</p><p> </p><p>The one with no bodies, when Will can bring himself to think about it again, starts in a way that’s not all that different from how the others usually start: </p><p> </p><p>Agent Crawford has three missing girls hidden in pages of Xerox printouts. They are dark-haired, blue-eyed, and have the archetypical and youthful clean white faces of midwestern women kept too long in cold, white spaces. Recognizable in their own high schools, but almost anonymous on the large college campuses. The type to play Lacrosse, and take summer vacations on the shores of the Great Lakes, girls who dream about getting out of their hometowns, and inevitably stay in them.  </p><p> </p><p>(<em>Maybe the last one isn’t true. They can’t find what’s left of them after all. But maybe still they live in their hometowns in infamy, pictures shown on a TV screen. You wonder sometimes if anyone misses you that way - “what happened to that kid Will Graham?” they ask, and you wave to them over miles, years, and absence, unseen.</em>)</p><p> </p><p>“No evidence of break-ins?” asks Doctor Bloom, Will pulling photo by photo by photo out of little envelopes of family pictures, school portraits, favorite things. There’s campus maps and school brochures to guide his knowledge of their universities, complete with class schedules and theoretical walking paths between buildings. They’ve been very thorough in their attempt to inform</p><p> </p><p>There’s a letterman jacket tidily boxed for the first girl, covered in patches and pins of an academic and promising woman in the making. Will’s never seen one before, and plucks at the felted edges of a proud wolf’s head, embroidered at the breast pocket of it. It’s the only unique thing out of the bunch, a summary of achievements that have seemingly amounted to nothing. </p><p> </p><p>“Not a one,” says Agent Crawford, stacking office boxes on the conference table alongside his folders. “It looks like they left for school on a Friday and just never came back to their homes.” </p><p> </p><p>Will wears the jacket to bed, tidily noted in the evening’s summary. He feels a bit guilty as he watches Beverly take meticulous observance of every enamel pin and chenille embroidered decoration, nothing left unaccounted for. He changed the print of a shirt once, going into sleep and coming back out in the morning and ever since they’ve kept his personal clothes plain and largely colorless, just in case inspiration strikes him.</p><p> </p><p>He doesn’t really dream of anything this first night, sleeping well beyond his usual time. There’s a vague sensation of taking a ride, like the school bus moving him to a new place. College students ride shuttles and trams, right? Smart Adelaide Foster, who wears her high school pride on woolen sleeves certainly did at the University of Minnesota, living across the river in St. Paul, so that’s who Will must be right now. </p><p> </p><p>When he wakes up all the patches and pins are gone. </p><p> </p><p>Not changed, just gone. </p><p> </p><p>“Well that’s new,” says Doctor Bloom, disturbed, and calls Director Purnell by a cell phone just outside the door once Price is done accounting exactly which things are gone. Will feels guilty - he doesn’t know how they’ll compensate the family for something bought with effort and years of a girl’s life, only that he doesn’t know where they would have gone. He didn't actually go anywhere this time.</p><p> </p><p>The next night, Will tries not to take anything from the office boxes, hesitant to destroy another keepsake that really should find its way back to the relatives, not into the void of his mind, which is apparently gaping and hungry for other people’s experiences. (<em>You have so few of your own.</em>) He crawls into a pair of black sweatpants and a white shirt, and focuses instead more intently on the campus shuttle, a thing that Crawford goes to great lengths to have new photos taken of before bedtime that night. </p><p> </p><p>He properly sees his bus this time. It is tidy and warm, a little muggy in the late July summertime the way that Biloxi sometimes felt when the breeze came from inland instead of the Gulf, though the impression of incoming autumn is on him. He is by himself, and the driver stares straight forward, and they go further and further into the suburbs of the city where outside the bugs are humming until the windows on either side are just grass and pines on either side of a highway. This too is familiar - maybe it's not Minnesota that he is thinking of after all, or maybe the middle ground States are really just that similar. A “rust belt” and a “bible belt” are one in the same - both smell of iron and sweat and people trying to get by the way they know how. </p><p> </p><p>When the bus comes to a stop, the driver doesn’t turn to see him. He just leans stiff and awkward to swing the door of the bus open mechanically, an action of habit. Will sits on the sensation of thinking he’s supposed to exit, but everything inside screams not to. The anonymity of the driver is uncomfortable, a face he can’t know. Will has no memory of this place. He doesn’t know what it’s tied to. </p><p> </p><p>He sits on his hands, pulse pounding through the fingertips until the sun is low, and the man is still motionless in his cap and uniform, and the grass goes from green, to gold, to high black waves, sussurating in the breeze. Wild things come alive in the crepuscular hours, screaming their primal violence beyond what he can see. They are hidden by branches and his ignorance. </p><p> </p><p>When he wakes, tight mouthed and anxious, there is a nasal cannula on his face and an IV in his arm, and three techs in the room tittering over a screen. He has slept for a week, trapped on a bus out of the overwhelming sense that if he doesn’t stay on it, there’s something in the woods, and he'll be trapped there with it. The pines of Minnesota are somewhere to disappear, and he's afraid to walk out in them.</p><p> </p><p>---</p><p> </p><p>It takes a few days for Will to come around on the idea of trying again. “Anyone would feel the same, Will,” says Doctor Bloom, combing his curls with delicately manicured fingers, chewed at the corners. She has a habit of biting her cuticles when nervous - he never actually sees her do it, only evidence of it, something done in private to ease off negative energy. She didn’t know what to expect of his long dream. It’s somehow reassuring to not be the only one at odds with themselves over that. She carries her concern as guilt hidden a soft voice. </p><p> </p><p>He gives it a little while to think, not sharing any observations about the bus or the fields - he’s made all that up himself through brochures and atlas guides, probably, and the last thing he needs is Agent Crawford pushing for more, more, more of a baseless thing. He eats his weight in egg and bacon burritos after several days of no food with extra salt, walks the halls with frantic irritability, Doctor Bloom trailing behind him and he tries to tire himself out, and can’t sleep.</p><p> </p><p>(<em>Maybe next time you won’t come back. Nobody ever told you that’s a possibility, brain stuck between here and whatever grey space you conjure your possessions from. Maybe that's where Adelaide Foster's letterman spoils have gone.</em>)</p><p> </p><p>It’s an unprecedented occurrence that triggers even Doctors Chilton and Sutcliffe to recommend removing him from any further projects until he’s resumed a familiar routine. “Totally off the charts weird brain activity by day three,” Doctor Sutcliffe explains to Director Purnell. “Looks more like a comatose mind than a sleeping one, like he just stalled out in there.” </p><p> </p><p>“A lack of a focus point makes for a poor retrieval,” Doctor Chilton adds, pen twisting between two fingers. “Crawford’s missing girls are going to stay missing. Even a peculiarity as talented as Will is going to struggle to know what to pick out of a hundred pictures when nothing looks disturbed. If there was a calling card other than appearance or age, surely it’s more obvious than boxes of pictures from summer camp, or favorite t-shirts. Better the girls be missing than the project compromised.” </p><p> </p><p>It’s this last statement more than anything that makes Will try again. </p><p> </p><p>It takes hours it feels like, looking into the not-light of his room’s ceiling, grey and dim and the sconces turned as low as they can without being off. (<em>The edge of your bed and your side table and lamp are visible this way - something physical to measure yourself by.</em>) He listens to the barely audible clicks and pops of his eyes closing. He swallows around a dry mouth from the cool, forced air from the vents. </p><p> </p><p>Alana is reading by the light of a small clip lamp, Bradbury’s <em> Dandelion Wine </em>tight between her fingers. She has stayed up with him talking of small things, looking soft and informal in a long flannel shirt and palazzo pants, fluttering in and out of the room for her nightly rituals like this is a slumber party, instead of a dangerous attempt to read the universe and find nothing waiting on the other side of the door. “I sleep better with company sometimes, too,” she comforts him over shared cups of chamomile tea, smiling, face still perfectly made up, like bare eyes and lips were too intimate. “There’s nothing to be scared of,” Doctor Bloom adds, as though she’s not watching him try not to scratch at the sensors on either side of his temples, taking frequent snapshots on a laptop of whatever it is that it shows - thoughts, anxiety, the swishing sound of blood in his ears.   </p><p> </p><p>But he does eventually sleep. He doesn’t take a ride on the shuttle bus this time. He doesn’t have to sit on his hands either, gathering imprints of the seat fabric on his skin. He is already at the roadside in the growing evening twilight, tall grass and trees rising up dark and thick before him. No cars are coming from any direction.</p><p> </p><p>Will walks forward, because it’s clearly where he’s supposed to go. </p><p> </p><p>The woods by most standards are normal - there’s nothing particularly ominous or unpleasant about them outside of the sense that something is wrong, an itch between the shoulder blades. Will supposes this is how you’re supposed to feel when predators are nearby, but the dusk is full of evening birds, chittering in the distance. The pine needles are crunchy underfoot, and vines and other leafy plants part for him to go further. </p><p> </p><p>(<em>Come in closer - everything’s alright. Everything has gravity here. You exist in this space, and you are <strong>so</strong> wanted.</em>) </p><p> </p><p>Much like the woods themselves, there’s nothing specific that cues the dread in Will’s stomach. It simply comes and settles, like a rock thrown into a puddle, a dull thud in the pit of it. He walks softer, rolls the foot from toes to heel along the edge, cringing at the underbrush’s crinkling insistence. He turns the corner on a stand of larch trees, and there it is - the cause. </p><p> </p><p>An elk has gone still on the other side of the stand, head down, legs bent at the front to look between bristling branches of the yellowing larch. Will only knows it to be an elk because it’s much too large to be a deer; he’s never actually seen one before, and perhaps this is why he stops to admire it. It’s inky blackness seems less a consequence of the growing night and more that it is sick, hiding in the forest where it should be but not the way that it is. There is the overwhelming certainty that it is not natural, and unthinking, Will steps backwards.</p><p> </p><p>(<b><em>Dominant bulls follow groups of cows during the rut, from August into early winter</em> </b> <em> , comes unbidden, a line from an encyclopedia that they keep in a set of 40 volumes on the third floor of the Institution. You read it when you were 10, and bored, and not yet acquainted with someone who takes you seriously, so you must be serious and knowledgeable in the absence of that.</em>)</p><p> </p><p>The elk goes still and low. It certainly saw him before he saw it, but Will’s retreat is enough to startle it properly now. Stalking requires ignorance, and they are aware of each other, and so now it brings its massive head to bow before him, and break the boughs of the trees between them. The crown of its antlers is impossibly large, cutting through the space between them so quickly and powerfully that the sound of evening birds disappears under splintering wood.  </p><p> </p><p>An antler tine deeply breaks skin on his side, just beneath the armpit when he automatically flings his left arm up to grab at the incoming horns. He knows it does because when he wakes, the white coverlet is reddening, and Doctor Bloom is paging for assistance, pulling the linens away to only cover him again, hand going bloody and wet to put pressure against the open wound. She is warbling in his ears.</p><p> </p><p>He has slept for an hour. He has brought nothing back, but so too is nothing missing, and that’s as close to a success as anyone thinks he’s going to get.</p><p> </p><p>They stitch him up, they tell him he’s done well, and ignore the trembling of the arm he casts up to defend himself. “Just residual nerves,” says Doctor Sutcliffe. “Your brain doesn’t know you’re not about to die, so it triggers the same response.” </p><p> </p><p>Will doesn’t think Doctor Sutcliffe knows if he’s about to die or not either. He starts to think not anyone here knows much of anything, and he’s left to his own devices because this is the first time that it was a risk to him personally in an immediate and potentially deadly way, not just uncomfortable, and nobody really has done the math on the value of that yet. Agent Crawford doesn’t come back by, no longer able to waste time on a bad lead. Will feels a little sorry for that - seems Director Purnell agrees better the other girls disappear than him after all. </p><p> </p><p>Will doesn’t know about that. He turns inwards on himself. He brings back dandelions for Doctor Bloom the next day, and Winston the next week, and a handful of snow from a family vacation Doctor Bloom described a month ago that she takes in the Smoky Mountains, and shies away from dark spaces.  </p><p> </p><p>Nobody stops him, because nobody knows how, which is good as confirmation for Will that he is tiring of this place. There is no joy in the twilit space of his room. Will starts to resent everything in a way he hasn’t since his Daddy stops sending postcards and checking in. Are there diminishing returns for suffering? Do the items and knowledge he brings back from the cliff sides of sleep offer more value than Will himself? </p><p> </p><p>If he had known this act of carefully holding handfuls of soft things for himself and for the only person that he sees as something of an ally, he might have not been as obvious about it. He would have brought back something flashy and impersonal and neatly itemized on a list somewhere of things designated to be of worth. He would have not wished Doctor Lecter on himself anymore than the glancing blow of an antler to the fourth rib down. </p><p> </p><p>(<em>“A true rib,” you are told glibly, and shown a chart of them like it’s as good as anesthetic while you’re cleaned and sewn back together. It’s a practical biology lesson after all, so you may as well pay attention.</em>) </p><p> </p><p>---</p><p> </p><p>Doctor Lecter doesn’t let Will open the new file - something laminated with the name <b> <em>Elise Nichols</em> </b> emblazoned on its tab. It is settled into his leather bag to take home and read over for himself first. He instead ends the meeting by guiding Will into the breakroom, where he begins the process of reheating a French pot-au-feu, which he is told should showcase more than the average beef marrow alongside its rustic vegetables. (<em>“I don’t care for waste of any kind,” says he, and you watch as a wooden spoon brought from home turns chilled disks of fat into shiny droplets on the stew’s surface, and cross-cuts of short rib. Your hand comes to your side when you see one.</em>) </p><p> </p><p>Will is tasked with watching thick slices of bread toast underneath a countertop convection oven that the good Doctor has declared an interest in replacing himself. He is buttering them generously from a foil-wrapped pat of a salted heavy cream variant when he finally can’t stand not knowing the fate of Crawford’s new girl. </p><p> </p><p>“So are we really going to just eat lunch and not discuss this?” asks Will. “Agent Crawford isn’t exactly known for his patience.”  </p><p> </p><p>“But I am known for mine. Take a day to think it over,” Doctor Lecter says, observing the steam rising from the stock pot. “From what I can see at a glance, it’s true that this one is rather different from the others.” </p><p> </p><p>“What,” Will says with an eye roll, resentment settling back in again. “Did they send the entirety of her room this time? Maybe her journal from middle school? How many more personal items do I get to destroy this time with a strongly apologetic note sent to the parents?”</p><p> </p><p>Doctor Lecter smiles. “Oh no,” he says. “There’s a whole body with this one. Agent Crawford’s girl-snatcher has made a mistake and left you something tangible.”   </p><p> </p><p>That stops Will’s face from twisting into something hateful. It goes smooth, even as he continues to slide the butter across the tops of bread slices. </p><p> </p><p>He always <em> thought </em> they were dying, but more so he thought they were ceasing to be anything. (<em>Is there a difference? Your Nana is gone like she’s disappeared too. Your fault, you remind yourself.</em>) Death is preferable. That at least has logic behind it, a pulling of the cord from the wall and the body going limp and useless without its kineticism. Observable matter, which decay follows after. Will can look at that.</p><p> </p><p>“And you want me to wait?” he asks, head turned with greasy fingers. </p><p> </p><p>“Well Miss Nichols won’t be any more or less dead if you take a day,” the Doctor says with a shrug and a politely small lift of the lips. He ladles golden brown soup into bowls, unbothered by his own flippancy or the small bones still caught on some of the meat. “You suffered the consequence of their blunt approach last time. I thought you’d prefer to have a say on this one. We have a thousand other vistas to travel - what difference does it make to me if you set this one aside?” </p><p> </p><p>The glint of enamel pins and texture of the chenille patches returns to Will and their glaring absence. The person who owned them is unmistakably irretrievable. They and she have settled somewhere unknown, and he has permission to leave them there if he’d like.  </p><p> </p><p>“Yeah,” he says, dipping bread into the hearty broth, the way that Doctor Lecter does it from across the table. “Yeah, I’ll think about it.” </p><p> </p><p>---</p><p> </p><p>Tuesday passes without remark. Nothing of note in the morning, though it’s the sort of day that Doctor Lecter is there bright and early. (<em>Good-morning-Will-where-did-you-go-last-night. We’ll-try-again-tomorrow-of-course.</em>) Will reluctantly journals because Doctor Lecter won’t accept a no, but Will is not accustomed to writing for himself, and it feels strange. </p><p> </p><p><b><em>October 1st,</em></b> he writes. <b><em>No dreams last night. I think I might sleep better when I eat too much. Dauphinois potatoes is an awfully fancy way to say baked potatoes, but at least there’s no nightmares, and I’m not pillaging bird colonies at night this time. I have to decide if I want to see Elise Nichols today,</em></b> he adds, like an afterthought. </p><p> </p><p>It’s not in any way a remarkable day. Tuesday - they go over the related rates of derivatives, and read portions of Jonathan Swift’s essays in preparation for Gulliver’s Travels, a previously forbidden book in his curriculum. Will thinks it’s because it’s fantastical. Doctor Lecter thinks because the writer doesn’t show proper adherence to the social order, but also that no good thought really does.</p><p> </p><p>After lunch, which is a very pretty Russian rose bread with olives and heavy cured meats between its plaits, it’s all geography - appropriately tied to their lunch, but all geography. Meticulously indexed and lists of referential photos, important buildings, historical figures and modern politics for the western territories surrounding Moscow guide him through neatly. In his periphery, Doctor Lecter continues to study the file - <b> <em>Elise Nichols</em> </b>, it accuses between them. </p><p> </p><p>Will takes his copy of John Keats to bed with him instead of Mr. Jonathan Swift. He thinks he’d like to look at something beautiful before committing to looking at something ugly. </p><p> </p><p>(<em>But you </em>are<em> committed, aren’t you Will?</em>)  </p><p> </p><p>He dreams of the woods. They are not the pine-filled ones, scratchy with underbrush and the threat of violence, but bright and sun-filled and multi-colored in a way that he doesn’t get to experience in reality. Will walks them in afternoon comfort, and only checks behind himself a couple of times for the heaving breath of the animal that gored him.</p><p> </p><p>---</p><p> </p><p>He wakes in the morning on Wednesday morning to a bed of leaves. He doesn’t think the shape of some of them is quite right, even if the texture and colors are - he’s never seen a maple tree before, so that’s obviously an approximation of something from an autumn wreath that sometimes shows up on an office door on the first floor. He does know cottonwood, and the seeping sweet smell of them from creekside, little tufts of seed floating in the sun, and how to tell the different kinds of oak apart from each other. That’s from a weekend picnic, Nana driving him into the lowland woods, watching as he stomps around in shallow puddles and reeds at the edge of a swampy inlet of water.</p><p> </p><p>“Good morning Will,” says Doctor Lecter. “Where did you go last night?” </p><p> </p><p>“Nowhere in particular,” says Will. “Just to the idea of somewhere I guess.” </p><p> </p><p>“I see John Keats chased you into the night,” Doctor Lecter strides over with a soft look, and picks up a leaf, one of the maple ones. Something’s off with the intensity of the red, looking more neon in reality than it did when Will pictured the afternoon light setting it ablaze, like it carried the sun with it. </p><p> </p><p>“I know they probably don’t actually get that red,” Will finds himself explaining. Doctor Lecter just twists the stem of the leaf between his fingers. There’s a long pause, where he appears to deliberate before smiling. </p><p> </p><p>“Would you care to see what one looks like right now?” he asks, and Will blinks, not sure if he heard correctly. Doctor Lecter watches his face, and for an agonizing moment, Will thinks he might just want to see what Will does when offered something he’s not supposed to have, but he continues. “I think there’s one on the road between the front gate and the building. It is only now beginning to change across the full crown,” he adds, looking back at the leaf.</p><p> </p><p>Will sighs, irritated again. “Do you think I don’t know what a leaf looks like?”</p><p> </p><p>“No, but I don’t think you’ve held one in years. Yours is brittle, paper thin, the veins and midrib drawn on in color but not in vasculature. Proper anatomy is important,” he adds. “Let us refresh your memory.” </p><p> </p><p>“You mean go outside?”</p><p> </p><p>“Unless you’d like a hastily taken picture from my phone tomorrow morning, yes, that is rather the intent.” </p><p> </p><p>Will honestly doesn’t know how to respond to that, other than to slide out from underneath his pile, leaves scattering everywhere, and dress for the day before he can change his mind. Doctor Lecter has to stop him to take the pulse oximeter from him, saying he’d hardly be able to arrange a similar encore at a later date if they didn’t complete the necessities first, and brushes a golden oak leaf from Will’s shoulder. Price looks vaguely mutinous when he sees all the leaves he’ll have to catalogue, but Will can barely pay it any mind, sliding into socks and sneakers.</p><p> </p><p>Going out the employee entrance, watched by a front desk secretary that Hannibal winks at before she begins dialing her phone, Will tries to chase away his anxiety about the consequences. </p><p> </p><p>---</p><p> </p><p>Doctor Chilton is as close to screaming as Will thinks he’s ever seen. </p><p> </p><p>Standing on the long road, gazing up into the trees alongside it where a wind rustles the foliage, Will doesn’t think he particularly cares. He hasn’t been on the exterior of their building in years, and he’s a little chilly today, and his shoes aren’t really insulated for walks so his toes are pinched into the front of them, but there’s a head of red and green-gold starting to work it’s way to brown above them. It’s the most real thing he’s been under-in-around since a thunderstorm rustled through the courtyard a few summer’s past. When a fly rushes past his ear, he sinks further into the morning, tries to settle his mind somewhere in the damp loam on the road’s embankment. </p><p> </p><p>Doctor Lecter doesn’t seem to care either, smiling thinly at Doctor Chilton and nodding where appropriate, but in no way disturbed. He is as calm as he was waking Will this morning, where the red in Doctor Chilton’s face is starting to overtake his neck in a shade similar to Will's imitation of a maple. </p><p> </p><p>“Of all the irresponsible, foolish, asinine things to corrupt a ten year long stretch of unbroken protocol-”</p><p> </p><p>“Frederick,” says Doctor Lecter.</p><p> </p><p>“-corrupting a stable environment for what? A morning constitutional? Couldn’t possibly wait for the weekend again? He might have darted into the trees and left you looking a fool and-”</p><p> </p><p>“Frederick,” says Doctor Lecter, pitched a little louder, annoyed.</p><p> </p><p>“-us looking like we’ve been just sitting here having a grand old time on the government dime with nothing to show for it, because we <em> all </em> know how reliably intelligent <em> teenagers </em> are about following rules,” continues the ranting speech. “What do you have to say for yourself?”</p><p> </p><p>A look comes across Doctor Lecter’s face again, not unlike the one he gives Agent Crawford on Monday. Something glacial that vanishes under fresh snowfall, made neat and clean. The smile comes back, enticing and perpetually in observant humor. </p><p>  </p><p>“Frederick, I see Kade hasn’t seen fit to tell you the conditions of my employment here, of which I had several,” he explains this time in the brief quiet between them, and the Doctor sounds more like he’s explaining to a child than to a grown man, voice modulated like he wants to laugh but knows he shouldn’t. “I am permitted to teach anywhere that is not expressly forbidden on the campus, and besides, a little Vitamin D before winter surely wouldn’t be amiss. Physical health, and so on.”  </p><p> </p><p>“Besides,” he continues, “Will wouldn’t leave me looking like a fool, now would he?” and to this he looks directly at Will, giving a wink again, like the one he gives the front desk receptionist. Another secret between them, knowing it was always a possibility, something to keep out of the reports. </p><p> </p><p>(<em>You are inexplicably grateful for his candor, just as you are with him before Agent Crawford. You wonder what else he guesses about you and how much you could tell him without repercussions.</em>)  </p><p> </p><p>“Will’s hardly a paragon of diligent adherence to instruction,” Doctor Chilton gruffly says. Will doesn’t really think that’s accurate - it’s maybe more that Will wasn’t diligently adherent when he was younger, and learning where the cage ends, and Frederick Chilton was holding his tether in tandem with Donald Sutcliffe.</p><p> </p><p>“So too is he not a rulebreaker, Frederick,” Doctor Lecter rebuts. “We are taking in the morning air before lessons, and before we dive into our good Uncle Jack’s nasty business in Minnesota. Wouldn’t you like a quick breather before doing the same?” he asks, perfectly reasonable to the end.  </p><p> </p><p>It’s enough that Director Purnell has given Doctor Lecter grace to make these decisions - there’s nothing more for Doctor Chilton to do than to retreat up the road back to the building, and likely thank the receptionist who tipped him off to the whole thing. That merits consideration - Will’s never thought Doctor Chilton had much authority, but he does seem to have influence. </p><p> </p><p>Will frowns, watching his retreating back. “Do you think I’ll be in trouble?”</p><p> </p><p>“Oh hardly,” says Hannibal. (<em>Doctor Lecter, you correct. They are always “Doctor”, not real people, don’t forget it.</em>) “Dreams are informed by our experiences, and you are having one that he doesn’t approve of, for whatever reason he’s convinced himself of. However,” he says, and his eyes are tracing not Will, but the tall yellow grasses on the side of the road, the mud in a ditch, the morning light and the leaves. Cataloguing, the way he catalogues everything else Will does. “You are having one I approve of, and for the purposes of this program, that’s all that matters.”</p><p> </p><p>Standing on the asphalt, toes still pinched, Will stares at him, strangely anxious in the absence. “And for what reason have you convinced yourself to approve of it?” </p><p> </p><p>“Curiosity,” he says glib as always, smiling. “Reference, yours and mine alike. It’s powerful to have shared experience, isn’t it?”</p><p> </p><p>“Are early morning walks powerful?”</p><p> </p><p>“If it is your first since grade school, I don’t see why it wouldn’t be,” he says kindly. “Walks give us perspective and use for our restless legs, good or bad alike. It seems wasteful to not give yours the kind of background it craves. All good things are wild, and free.”</p><p> </p><p>Will smiles. “Thoreau? At this hour?”</p><p> </p><p>Hannibal picks up a reddened leaf, fallen to the asphalt. He seems pleased by Will’s recognition, if not his jabbing candor. “If not at this one, then I do not know an hour better suited.”   </p><p> </p><p>Will knows he’ll have to go inside, but the chill on the ground from the frost he’s missed is a new thing, as is the sun coming down through a hedge of burgundy blackhaw to highlight its coal black berries. He sees a group of geese overhead for a flash. His shoes rasp at the rough texture of the path, catching and squeaking occasionally on the rubber. He closes his eyes to it for a moment, shafts of light between the high boughs coming through the red of his eyelids. </p><p> </p><p>He doesn’t remember what it’s like to be a part of the landscape, and consequently stays close to Doctor Lecter, who looks less at where he walks, and more so at Will. (<em>Shepherds must mind their flock. So too must hunters mind their prey. You stalk through the woods once more, mindful of the glinting rise of horns, not sure which was which.</em>) </p><p><br/>
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